


fire in your heart (ice in your hands)

by ekourege



Category: Katekyou Hitman Reborn!
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - College/University, Attempted Assassinations, Attempted Murder, Breaking and Entering, But both exist, Different Flame Lore, Enemies to Friends, Gen, Mage Tsuna, Magic AU, Magic society differs from Mafia society, Mental Health Issues, Mukuro is very much Not Functioning, Mukuro is... very fucked up, Non-Mafia AU, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Sort of? - Freeform, The Kokuyo Gang are a wanted group, Tsuna is trying desperately to become a functioning adult, some years later
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-05
Updated: 2021-02-01
Packaged: 2021-03-08 22:36:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 7
Words: 21,808
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27394339
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ekourege/pseuds/ekourege
Summary: 19-year-old Sawada Tsunayoshi has a lot on his plate. From balancing work and school to trying to outgrow his “Dame-Tsuna” label, he has his work cut out for him. Given his history, he thinks he’s doing just fine, just about average—suitable for an average guy like him.Things are going fine. Until, that is, Rokudo Mukuro shows up in his living room at 3 AM on a Tuesday, declares that he’s related to the largest mafia syndicate in the world, and for that, he must die.But Tsuna’s father isn’t the only one with secrets: Sawada Tsunayoshi may not be able to light himself on fire, but hecanuse magic.
Relationships: Chrome Dokuro & Rokudou Mukuro, Chrome Dokuro & Sawada Tsunayoshi, Kokuyo Gang & Rokudo Mukuro, Kokuyo Gang & Sawada Tsunayoshi, Lancia & Sawada Tsunayoshi, Rokudou Mukuro & Sawada Tsunayoshi, Sasagawa Kyouko & Sawada Tsunayoshi, Sawada Nana & Sawada Tsunayoshi
Comments: 31
Kudos: 195





	1. A Ghost in Your Home

**Author's Note:**

> This fic was intended to be released as part of a KHR Big Bang, but the event ended up cancelled! So in lieu of that, I am releasing the fic on my own. It will contain some art I've drawn for the fic myself, eventually. 
> 
> Additionally, the first six chapters of the fic were beta-read by an editor on the project, [KnightPunk.](https://archiveofourown.org/users/KnightPunk) Thank you for taking the time to edit the fic!
> 
> So, with all of that in mind...Hello again everyone, welcome to one of the biggest projects I've undertaken this year! 
> 
> This is a Mage!Tsuna AU, where Tsuna was never inducted into the mafia and instead tried to cope with his frighteningly average life (until it _wasn't_ so average anymore.) Of course... can your life really BE average (or unrelated to the underworld) when wanted criminal Rokudo Mukuro comes crashing into your life? Methinks not. It's set several years in the future, but since the characters aren't like the TYL!characters in canon I've elected not to use the tag, just to avoid confusion. 
> 
> This is the shortest chapter, I think, and I've watched some chapters get steadily longer as the fic progresses.
> 
> Enjoy!

The day Sawada Tsunayoshi’s life changed forever started off normal. There was no heavy rain or odd weather, it was neither too hot nor too cold, too sunny or too cloudy. It was a perfectly average Tuesday in all respects—it should have been a perfectly average Tuesday in every way. 

_‘Well,’_ Tsuna figures, _‘it had been a busier day than usual.’_ Even so, it’s not like busy days were anything out of the ordinary!

It was a normal day. At least, for the first half of it. 

Tsuna was an average person. He attended school, worked a part-time job, and spent most of his time haphazardly attempting to strike a balance between the two. He wasn’t popular—not that it bothered him much, he’d never exactly been the most well-liked person in the room—but he wasn’t being shunned. He wasn’t really interested in joining any clubs, and he didn’t have any strong passions for sports or academics, either. He had a loving mother and came from an average household with average goals. 

In fact, on that average day in September, the only thing on Tsuna’s mind was how dearly he wanted to take a nap—if only he hadn’t procrastinated on that presentation, then maybe he could’ve gone home and relaxed.

_(By ten-thirty that morning, tension started to bubble in his gut. ‘It’s nothing,’ He told himself, ‘just anxiety for tomorrow’s presentation.’ Tsuna knew what it meant to be unusual, to stick out like a nail that needed to be hammered down, and he wanted no part of it.)_

Yes, except for a few minor details, he was a pretty average guy—just the way he liked it.

“Tsuna-kun!” someone shouts, stopping him in his tracks. He was on his way to the school’s library, to work on his presentation before a shift at work in an hour and a half, but he looked up from where he’d been tapping away at his phone at the figure nearly _skipping_ towards him.

“Kyoko-chan!” Tsuna yelps, as Sasagawa Kyoko bounds up to him, that same wide, carefree smile she’s always worn plastered on her face. “I thought you were meeting up with Haru for lunch today?”

“I am!” she says, “but I thought I’d swing by and say hi before I did. You’re heading to the Library, right? To work on that presentation?”

He pockets his phone, humming a little as he shoves the device into his hoodie. He’s not exactly dressed to impress today, having woken up past his alarm. It was a bad habit he’d yet to fully break, spanning all the way back to his middle school years. Granted, he wasn’t always this bad about it, but he hadn’t gotten much sleep the night before.

(These days, he didn’t have his mother to wake him up—he’d only had enough time to scramble for some clean clothes and grab his bag before rushing out the door. It was a miracle he made it to the train on time.)

“Yeah,” he sighs, “I avoided it too long. I thought I could finish it up in a night if I hurried, but... it didn’t turn out that way. I hate my life, Kyoko-chan.”

Kyoko, for her part, only giggles. He’s a bit hurt by that if he’s honest. Couldn’t someone be sympathetic to his plight? He doesn’t know why he puts up with this. “Oh, it’s not _that_ bad, how many times have you done this now?”

He groans, hiding his face in his hands. “Like, every time. I’ve really gotta stop doing this.”

Kyoko laughs, “you do. But, I know you’ll get it done.”

He grunts noncommittally, doubtful at the prospect. Kyoko just shoots him an amused look and lightly pats him on the shoulder. Jerk. 

“Well, I’ve got to get going, Tsuna-kun,” she hums, looking down at her phone for the time, “but I’ll see you tomorrow at the usual time and place?”

At this, he perks up. “Yeah! Did you find something new? Anything interesting, maybe?” 

A wry smile makes it onto her lips, eyes twinkling in a way Tsuna finds extremely suspicious. “Maybe! You’ll just have to wait and see.”

“Wha—Kyoko-chan!”

“Good luck on your project—you can do it!”

“Hey—Kyoko-chan!” Tsuna whines, watching in dismay as she waves at him before skittering down the hall. He sighs, shoulders dropping, as she turns the corner without properly answering his question.

That was just like her.

Well, whatever. Tsuna would find out tomorrow when they met up during their study session. Right now, he had a presentation to work on, and there was no time to waste!

Later, he’d look back at this day and kick himself. One long shift at work and a hastily finished project later, Tsuna was nearly crawling with dread, the kind that sat heavy in his gut and made everything more frightening than it was. His commute home was a turbulent one, a strange sense of anxiety catching hold of him.

He really should have expected something to go wrong, but he’d been so tired and, well, it was nearly inevitable he’d fall asleep… his couch was so comfortable and he was absolutely _exhausted…_

He _really_ should have expected it.

* * *

When he wakes next, something’s wrong. Tsuna’s eyes snap open; awake and alert all at once, and he’s sure there’s absolutely no reason for him to be up at this hour, as he’s sure it’s hours before his alarm is set to go off.

He’s about to be frustrated, angry at being awake when he doesn’t have to be before he registers what—or rather, _who_ —is there with him, and the red-hot anger turns to ice. There’s a man poised above his prone body, some—some sort of weapon? _Jesus Christ is that a trident? What the hell_ —angled at his sternum. 

For a single, hysterical second, he doesn’t believe his eyes. Whoever’s robbing him right now, because why else would someone be in his apartment, has a red eye with the kanji for six in it, and he _must_ be imagining things because they _glow._

Mismatched eyes narrow, and Tsuna blinks once, twice, three times. 

He freaks.

Immediately, everything springs into action, with Tsuna lurching off of the couch with a high-pitched, strangled screech. The robber—and for god’s sake, he’s _broke!_ —jabs the weapon down, right through his couch cushion. _Holy shit._

He’s definitely hyperventilating, and the man with the trident and weird eyes actually _smirks_ at him, yanking the weapon from where it’s embedded in his couch and pointing it at him once again.

The man jabs at him again, laughing, a low, hollow kind of laugh, haunting in its oddity. Tsuna, of course, yelps, rolling to the side before he can even register even doing it. One of the blades on the thing nicks his arm, smearing blood on the glittering metal, but it’s better than having been stabbed.

Flinching, his heart hammering in his chest, Tsuna scrambles backward as he tries to collect his words over the tightness in his throat. “Why-” he whimpers pathetically, “I—I don’t have any money! Please!” 

“I could care less about your money,” the man sneers, almost in disgust. 

“Then, what?! Why are you doing this?!” he cries, terrified, as his back hits a wall and—oh, _oh fuck_ —he’s trapped—

The trident sinks into the wall beside his head with a solid _thunk,_ sharpened points impaled in the drywall rather than his flesh. That same hollow, chilling laugh rings out, ratcheting his anxiety up another notch. _”Why_ am I doing this?” he mocks, a wane smile carved into his face, long, dark hair falling over his shoulders in a haphazard, almost unkempt way.

Tsuna swallows, nodding. 

“I suppose it wouldn’t hurt to inform you of your crime. If you _really_ don’t know,” he murmurs, looming over Tsuna who’s currently hunched in on himself, “you’ll be dead soon, anyway... it wouldn’t hurt to answer.”

And, oh, what an answer it is.

“You, Sawada Tsunayoshi, were born to _scum,_ ” he enunciates with relish, like he’s enjoying this, “that father of yours is a man soaked in blood. A mobster, one part of the largest _Familigia_ in the Underworld. An organization so entrenched in sin that just the name of it can scare even the hardest of mafia men, the _worst_ of men.” 

“Huh-?! Listen, I haven’t even seen the guy since I was in single digits! Even if that were true, I have nothing to do with the fucking _Mafia!_ I swear it!” Tsuna exclaims, frantically trying to get this guy to understand that there must have been some sort of mistake here, that he has absolutely nothing to do with all of this, with whatever this guy thinks he and his family is involved with.

The man doesn’t seem to be swayed by this, as if he’s not about to senselessly murder Tsuna for something he didn’t even do. “I hate this world, but I hate the Underworld the most… for the sake of my goal, _I’ll kill everyone whose blood is tainted by it.”_

“Wha-”

He wraps his gloved hands around the handle of the trident, smug. “You should hope you have better luck in your next life, Sawada.” Then, the weapon is pulled from the wall slowly, with purpose, the intruder making a show of it. The trident, twinkling like the bright, glowing pair of eyes staring down at him in glee, is brought up to strike one final time. “You may… rest now.” 

Oh god, he’s going to die, he’s really going to die.

_He’s gonna die._

Tsuna brings his hands up over his head, shielding himself, shutting his eyes, and crying out one final, desperate thing. 

_Shield,_ just that one word, tears itself from his throat as his would-be murderer swings the blades down in an arch, laughing all the while. Where it would have sunk through his skin, plunging into his chest and snuffing Tsuna out right then and there, it bounces off harmlessly, a pulse of faint orange rippling over his skin.

_It worked._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This fic updates every Saturday.
> 
> Thanks for reading! If you want to see more of my content, as well as writing updates, I'm also on Tumblr! 
>   * [Main Blog](https://ekourege.tumblr.com/)
>   * [KHR Blog](https://khrmutual.tumblr.com/)
> 



	2. Grand Beginnings

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A spell, a plea, and a tentative deal.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello again, and so soon at that! Originally. I had planned on uploading the cover illustration in lieu of the next chapter, but frankly, I'm in a GREAT mood today, so I thought "why not?"
> 
> So, have two chapters this week. As a treat!
> 
> This chapter was beta'd by [KnightPunk](https://archiveofourown.org/users/KnightPunk), here on Ao3! Thank you!
> 
> Enjoy.

A hysterical laugh bubbles out of Tsuna, breathy and cracked.

“It—it worked,” he giggles, panting as he tries to gain control of his thundering heart. He’s absolutely soaked in his own sweat, the trail of smeared blood running down his left arm adding to the look.

_(Why was this happening to him? Only Tsuna’s luck could be this bad…)_

The man attempts to jab the weapon into him several more times, causing him to flinch, even as it harmlessly bounces off the shield he put up. Tsuna, shaking, cowering as adrenaline rushes through his veins, just continues to laugh. 

Oh god, that was terrifying. 

That spell had never worked for him before, he’d never been able to call forth the will to actually cast it. He really thought he was going to die then and there!

There’s a wild grin on his face, he knows, but he can’t bring himself to care over the rush of blood in his ears and the relief swallowing him, can’t hear the violent man’s confusion over the sound of his own harsh breathing. It takes the university student a moment to come back to himself, to remember that it wasn’t over yet. 

His attempted murderer is still _right there_ in front of him, and he doesn’t seem like he’s planning on going anywhere anytime soon.

“Oh?” he says, sounding less upset about this than Tsuna would have first assumed. If anything, he sounds almost... _amused._ “To think you had such a trick up your sleeve… interesting, maybe this will be more entertaining than I first thought.”

Tsuna, safe in the knowledge that the spell will hold for at least another twenty minutes, slowly uncurls himself, lowering his arms so that they come to rest in his lap. Were the madman to attempt to touch him, his grip would simply slip and slide off of him like oil on water, repelled by the force of the magic he called.

Still, it wouldn’t last forever. And with how much willpower he’d funneled into the Call, he couldn’t say for sure how long it would last. Twenty minutes at the least, but magic was finicky and what seemed to be a six-hour spell could end up being three hours or less. 

He shoots him a suspicious look. “Uh…” he says, incredibly articulate for the extremely precarious situation he’s found himself in.

“Tell me,” the man with the trident says next, “how did you do _that_ if you were not involved with the Mafia, as you claimed? I see the appeal in attempting to act like a regular civilian, but I assure you it won’t work on me.”

Is he being accused of lying about his life? By the guy who just tried to _kill him?_ Tsuna scowls, face twisting. He’s about to tell him to _fuck off,_ to get the hell out of his apartment before Tsuna dials for the police, but what slips out instead is, “who are you?”

The man narrows his eyes at Tsuna, looking calculative—like he knows something Tsuna doesn’t—but puffs his chest out anyway. “I am Rokudo Mukuro. Not that it will matter much, as you’ll be dead as soon as… whatever that is wears off.” he sounds totally confident that it will.

He’s right, but it still pisses Tsuna off. At least he has the man’s name now.

“It won’t wear off any time soon,” Tsuna rebukes, “you’re better off trying to kill someone else for no reason. I wasn’t lying—I have no clue what the hell you’re talking about.”

Rokudo bends down, crouching so that he’s level with Tsuna, that damn smirk still plastered to his face, even as he clenches his hand tight around his weapon. “Then what was it you just did? I am not a foolish man, and you cannot convince me otherwise… though it was a good try.”

“I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.”

Quick as a whip, Rokudo flicks Tsuna in the head. It doesn’t fully land, sliding like he had missed his head entirely, but it does cause the spell stretching over his skin to pulse orange, like it had all the other times he’d tried to hurt him. “This.” 

“That’s—that’s different.”

“Explain.”

“Haha… no,” Tsuna says cooly, resolutely avoiding eye contact. Mind racing as he scrambles to think up a way to get this guy to piss off—for good, or he’s toast. 

“I’ve already said this… you can’t fool me.”

He groans.

“I am a very patient man, Sawada, I will wait for this to wear off—and it will.”

“No, it won’t.” 

“We’ll see.”

Tsuna’s broken out into a cold sweat again, for sure.

* * *

Thirty minutes pass by quietly, the two of them locked in a stalemate that seemed would only end when the spell wore off—something neither of them were sure of, though one had a better idea than the other.

Tsuna, temporarily immune to murder, had slowly risen to his feet and reached for his phone, while Rokudo Mukuro simply watched, moving to lean on the arms of his couch. His first impulse is to phone the cops—a sensible impulse, if he were anyone else—but thinks better of it. 

Firstly, Tsuna had no clue what he would even really say? _“Help, I’m being murdered! Oh, but not right now, maybe check back in an hour?”_ if he described what Rokudo looked like, he’s pretty sure no one would believe him. In fact, with his luck, he’d probably get hung up on. Not to mention it’d aggravate the already extremely dangerous man further, and he wasn’t looking to get his phone broken today. Secondly, he currently had a protection spell on him, and that meant he was kind of glowing, faintly. 

He didn’t want to know what would happen if a regular person, much less law enforcement, stumbled upon him while he was like this. Or, even worse, if anyone _important_ found out about it.

It just… wasn’t a good idea. He’d really just have to deal with this on his own, to protect both himself and the people he cared about. To do that, he needed to keep everyone he knew away from him for as long as possible.

_(He wasn’t going to drag Kyoko into this. He couldn’t—wouldn’t—put her through this, in harm’s way of a killer just because he was scared. It wouldn’t be right.)_

So instead of doing what any rational human being would do, Tsuna just sent a text, pointedly ignoring the way his hands shake.

* * *

**Kyoko**

**_3:37 am_**  
gonna have to do a rain check on the study session today, something came up  
still not done with that presentation  
you know the one

* * *

It should be noted that Tsuna is a terrible liar. 

Nevertheless, he knows that Kyoko has an 8 AM class, so she probably won’t question it until at least ten-thirty. That should, hopefully, give him enough time to deal with this. He’s not confident he’ll make it to class today but… one thing at a time. Plus, Kyoko was never one to bother with this sort of thing, so if he’s lucky she may never question it at all.

If he’s really lucky, maybe he’ll even make it out of this alive.

As he does this, Rokudo side-eyes him with a piercing gaze. He wants to shiver, thoroughly freaked out, but he refrains, trying his best not to react. Not yet, at least. 

As Tsuna goes to absently pocket his phone, the worst possible thing happens. The faint glow lining his skin pulses once, almost shivering over the top of his skin, stutters, and then starts to fade.

 _‘Shit!’_ Tsuna thinks to himself frantically, _‘I was really banking on this lasting longer than half an hour-’_

A laugh rings out from beside him, loud and laden with glee. “See? You can’t fool me, Sawada.”

The words draw a curse from Tsuna, who stumbles backward. When had he gotten there? _‘Back at square one!’_

Rokudo’s eyes shine, leering at him as he spins the trident in his hands, readjusting his grip on it, stepping forward menacingly as he does so. If he was trying to scare Tsuna by doing so, it was scarily effective.

Tsuna eyes the madman, eyes his front door. Looks between the two, then side-eyes the door to his bathroom. Madman. Front door. Bathroom. 

A split-second decision is made, and Tsuna spins on his heel and bolts for the bathroom, Rokudo immediately giving chase.

The university student barrels into the bathroom, scrambling for the doorknob and attempting to shut the door in Rokudo’s face.

It only partially works, the door bashing into his pursuer’s shoulder, causing the man to grunt in aggravation. Tsuna tries to lean all his weight into the door, to force it shut and push the other man back, but it fails, as he manages to wedge the end of the trident between the door and the frame; preventing him from closing it all of the way and saving himself. It jams with a banging sound.

Rokudo attempts to bring the trident up, jabbing it through the small gap, but only succeeds in hitting the prongs against the doorknob, causing Tsuna to cry out a “Ha!” in triumph. The weapon recedes, bumping against the door, and it finally, _finally_ clicks shut. Tsuna is quick to desperately secure the lock, preventing the man from entering. It’s dark, but he’s safe.

He’s confident the man won’t be able to bludgeon it. Rokudo, for all his arrogance, was pretty much skin and bones. Tsuna was sure he didn’t have the strength to do anything. 

“Take that!” he yells, chuckling.

Huffing, Tsuna crawls into the bathtub and curls into a ball, feeling the edges of the basin with his hands… Now all he had to do was call the— _wait_.

 _‘Wait… where’s my phone?’_ he thinks, almost shell shocked as he pats at himself in dawning horror. His pockets were empty. He still couldn’t _see._

He… dropped it, didn’t he? 

There’s shuffling from outside the door, but he ignores it, more focused on finding the wretched device. 

Tsuna looks left, scanning the floor for the distinct, black rectangle and—there! By the door! A small black shape that was darker than the other spots on the floor. Thank god it hadn’t fallen out somewhere between the living room and hallway. 

Wiping the beaded sweat off his brow, Tsuna reaches over the basin of the tub and makes to snatch it from the floor. It’s a little too far, so he ends up swiping at it, fingers grazing the edge, but not enough to pull it towards him. 

He scoots a little closer, the tub making a slight squeaking noise as he does so. He reaches, strains-

And three bloodied prongs are stabbed through the door frame, inches away from his head.

Tsuna _screams._

He quickly backs away, leaving his phone abandoned, left to the mercy of the trident, and the strength of his door. The trident is pulled from where it’d run through the door, leaving three distinct, jagged holes.

Tsuna mourns for his security deposit.

He flinches, yelping, as the trident is thrown into the door again, spikes jutting from the splintering wood over and over again. Tsuna may be shrieking, but Rokudo is laughing, _again._

A single, red eye peeks through one of the holes. Tsuna _hates_ the number six, now. He’ll never look at it the same way again. The eye blinks once, and then disappears, Rokudo backing away from the door once again.

There’s silence for a single moment, and then there’s a _SLAM!_ against the door. The metal lock whines for a moment as it bends, the wooden door splintering entirely. 

His bathroom door, his only protection, and last resort fell to the floor in pieces. Rokudo, like he hadn’t just broken down the door, simply steps inside, careful to avoid stepping on the sharper bits.

He swallows, licking his lips as he peers into the eyes boring holes into him. His mouth is dry, and he’s scared, and Rokudo’s _broken his bathroom door_ and…

Tsuna caves.

“Wa-wait,” he stutters raising his hands up defensively, palms splayed out in a placating manner, “hold on!”

He forgets that the other man probably can’t see it.

“Why should I?” Rokudo says petulantly, “I’ve waited long enough, don’t you think?”

“No, just—wait! Let me explain. I-I can explain.”

Tsuna heaves, eyes watering. “Please.”

The man snorts once, before shrugging. “Explain, and do it quickly.” 

He does not lower the trident even slightly. He nods and licks his lips again.

“Okay, okay… okay. I shouldn’t be telling you this, fuck—I should die before telling you this, but… that? That thing I just did? That was magic.”

Tsuna watches with bated breath as the trident dips slightly, lowering from eye level to somewhere around his shoulders. 

“Magic?” Rokudo breathes, a look in his eyes telling Tsuna he’s _absolutely_ going to regret this. 

The broken door meant that there was at least some light filtering into the cramped space, but not enough to see much of the man in detail. He’s outlined by the dull light from the lamp in the living room, almost backlit as he angles the trident at him. All Tsuna can see, has been really able to see this entire time, is his eyes. Just the eyes, one red, one blue.

He’s about fucking sick of them, but he powers on. “Um, magic is real. That was… a protection spell. A minor one, yeah, but there are a lot of different kinds of protection spells that do different stuff, and that changes how long they last...” He realizes he’s about to go on a tangent and coughs lightly to bring himself back on track. “I, honestly, have no clue how you even got in here because… because this place is charmed against intruders. Oh, um, you don’t know what a charm is so-”

Tsuna doesn’t know how Rokudo’s expression can get any flatter, absolutely oozing bemusement. “Magic… you say?” he practically drawls. 

“Ye-yeah. Magic.”

His eyes flash, angry. 

“This was a waste of my time. If you won’t explain…”

“Shit! That didn’t come out right: I’m not lying! I can prove it, I swear!”

Rokudo harrumphs, making a short noise that Tsuna takes as an encouragement. “Um, do you… happen to have a lighter on you?”

“No.”

“Then—uh, in the drawer beside the sink…. There’s a lighter. I can, uh, prove it to you if you let me get it.”

“How do I know you won’t use it to harm me?”

“You… have a trident in my face.”

Rokudo huffs. “Fine. Be quick.”

Tsuna quickly scrambles to his feet and skitters to the kitchen, keeping an eye on the man, hoping he won’t decide this isn’t worth it and stab him in the back. He rifles through the kitchen drawer for a moment, feeling around for the lighter he knows for sure is in there, before his fingers graze over the cool tip. Tsuna makes a small noise of satisfaction, and pulls it out, holding it up between both himself and Rokudo.

“Watch,” he says, simply.

Tsuna takes a deep breath and attempts to call his magic. 

Calling one’s magic creates a very specific feeling, he knows. It starts with a faint pulsing, an almost echo of a heartbeat, another layered over the first, visible one. The feeling spreads down his arms, power almost intertwined with his nerve endings as he breathes, inhales, and _wants._

Magic is about resolve. It’s about taking a want, a need, and forming it in your mind, summoning the courage to want it wholeheartedly—to make it a reality before your very eyes.

Tsuna flicks the lighter on, the small flame flickering to life with a _fwoosh._ The flame flickers, before… twisting. It grows longer, thinner, losing its classic teardrop shape as it twirls into fuzzy loops. 

He holds the spell for a moment longer, then lets it go.

Immediately, the manipulated flame untangles itself, dissipating. Tsuna releases the button, and the flame goes out entirely. “How’s that? I can change the color, too, if you need more proof,” he chirps, satisfied with himself.

(He remembers, acutely, when even that spell was difficult for him. Now, however, he can cast that with ease, call the will and the magic to tame and manipulate fire, even if it was just a small flame. He’s… honestly kind of proud of himself.)

Mismatched eyes look at him. In the dim lighting, Tsuna can see his lips curl, brows raising. Then, the trident aimed at his stomach is lowered, brought back to the mad man’s side. “That spell you cast on yourself, the one from before. Teach it to me.”

_Huh?_

Tsuna gapes at him. “Me? Teach _you?”_

Rokudo points the trident at him again.

“Sure, fine, whatever! _Just stop pointing that thing at me!”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! If you want to see more of my content, as well as writing updates, I'm also on Tumblr! 
>   * [Main Blog](https://ekourege.tumblr.com/)
>   * [KHR Blog](https://khrmutual.tumblr.com/)
> 



	3. Lovely to Meet you, Roommate!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rokudo Mukuro moves in. Tsuna sets some ground rules.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's Saturday again!
> 
> I don't have much to say here other than I thought this chapter was fun to write, so I hope you all enjoy it.

Things calmed down after that, with Tsuna managing, narrowly, to convince Rokudo that while he _really_ wanted to teach him that spell right now, it would actually… take a while to get to the point of casting that spell. The other man, of course, had smirked at him and haughtily told Tsuna he was quick on the uptake, but eventually relented.

Also, he has classes today. He hadn’t struggled over that presentation for nothing, even if all he really wanted to do was flop into bed, scream into his pillow, and then pass out. 

It took _pinky swearing_ to the man that he wouldn’t bail and suddenly disappear, mostly because this was his apartment and he didn’t really have anywhere else to go. Sure, he could hide out at his mom’s for a while, but that could lead a dangerous, violent criminal directly to her doorstep, and he wasn’t willing to do that. The same thing went for Kyoko. He wouldn’t do it. Rokudo was…a very intimidating figure, and he wasn’t going to try and antagonize him until he fully knew what he was capable of.

Additionally, he was going to present his project, even if it killed him. At this point, Tsuna was just looking for some sort of _normal_ again. Normal was stressing over class projects, early classes, and public speaking. Normal was _not_ stressing over the murderer in his apartment with the weird eyes and creepy smile and being threatened into teaching someone he’s just met magic. He could already feel the headache coming on.

It was around six forty-five in the morning that Rokudo disappeared. There one moment watching Tsuna fretfully putter around his apartment, looking for an excuse to get the man to leave him alone for a little while, gone the next, suddenly vanishing like he’d never even been there in the first place. 

Tsuna could have sworn he had charmed his household against these kinds of spells, against intruders, most low to mid-tier illusion spells, and specifically against individuals who approached with malicious intent. He could have sworn, which makes this all the weirder because _Rokudo had acted like he had no clue what magic was._ And, last he checked, vanishing into thin air was a very _magical_ thing to do.

He resigns himself to a quiet freak out in the solace of his now empty, thoroughly trashed apartment. He resolutely does not peer at the remains of his bathroom door for another fifteen minutes, simply sitting on the un-stabbed side of his couch and staring at the wall for a little while, until he realizes that if he doesn’t hurry up and get ready, he’ll be late to class.

Without further delay, he quickly showers in the tatters of the bathroom, thanking everything that was holy that the bathtub was virtually untouched, and patches himself up, trying not to feel sick at the way the water turns pink with his own blood. 

_(His blood is on the floor, too. Tsuna ignores the way his breath hitches at the sight.)_

Tsuna checks the time once more, willing himself not to feel physically ill, and scrambles to pack up his notes, packing his laptop into his bag and stowing away the flash drive with his project on it for safekeeping. He didn’t know what he would do if he lost it. As he opens his door to leave, he takes one final sweep of his apartment. He peers at the smeared blood, holes in his walls, and wood debris scattered down the hall. 

Tsuna scowls, sighs, and closes the door behind him. He’d deal with it after class.

He’s midway through his morning commute, having barely made it to the train, when his phone buzzes in his pocket. A text from Kyoko.

* * *

**Kyoko**

**_7:42 am_**  
Just got ur txt!  
Call me later tho, ok? I wanna know how your presentation went   
:D

* * *

Well, he’d certainly try his best to. He texts back a short reply agreeing, knowing that despite hoping the madman would stay gone, it was likely a pipe dream with his luck. In fact, he almost suspects the man is tailing him even now, invisible to him. Maybe he was just being paranoid… but was he though, really?

The next couple hours pass by in a near-blur, an exhaustion induced stupor that makes each moment to the next almost watery in their passing, shifting between passing in the blink of an eye and each second taking an eternity; a special kind of purgatory reserved for only the most sleep-deprived of university students.

He presents, shittily, but at that point he can’t really bring himself to care, just happy to have made it through the damn thing in one piece. Tsuna exits class scrubbing at his face and trying to will the growing headache in his temples away, figuring it was best to go home and take a short nap before his next class—it wasn’t for another couple hours, anyway.

* * *

“Why are there more of you?” Tsuna laments when he enters his apartment next, face blank. He stops dead in his tracks, squinting as he struggles to remember if there had been more than one invader earlier that morning.

He knew it was too good to be true. Tsuna wonders, absently, if he’d done something in a past life to warrant this.

Rokudo, currently lounging on his couch with one hand propping up his chin, smiles wide and uses the other to gesture to the others in a sweeping motion. “These are my underlings,” he says, seemingly proud to call the hooligans invading his apartment his minions. He looks to the other three people to see how they feel about being called such a thing, only to find them appearing absolutely unbothered by the sentiment.

The one with a knit-wear hat on— _it was September!_ —even has the audacity to send him a little half-wave, before looking away and proceeding to act as if Tsuna wasn’t even _there._

“That’s Ken, that’s Chikusa, and… don’t worry about the last one,” Rokudo absently introduces, lackadaisically pointing to whoever was being introduced. The one named Ken, a man with wild blond hair and a nasty looking scar cutting across his nose, snorts in lieu of a greeting. Like his other… compatriots? Friends? He, too, quickly goes back to acting like Tsuna is a part of the scenery.

Resentment lashes at Tsuna’s chest, and he nearly demands the name of the third “guest”, a tall, stoic man with greasy, slicked hair and a glassy look in his eyes, before thinking better of it. Honestly? Truly? He didn’t even want to know what that was all about.

Rokudo continues, either not noticing or consciously ignoring the dumbfounded look on his face, “they will be staying here, with me, until you’ve finished teaching the… spell you used to me.”

He can feel his face contort, fingers twitching as he resists the urge to go absolutely nuclear, forcing himself to exhale harshly. He wasn’t the bravest person he knew (that particular award went to Haru Miura, Tsuna was sure she could send even a lion packing with just a look), but this was getting ridiculous. It was like Rokudo was _determined_ to push all of his buttons—and then some.

“That’s not a… bad idea or anything,” he grits out, “but I only have one spare futon. I mean, there’s the couch but… look at it.” Tsuna eyes the holes in the fabric, and the beginnings of the inner fluff peaking through, frizzy and uncomfortable looking.

Rokudo simply waves him off, unconcerned. “They’ll take care of that.”

He can’t hold back the noise of frustration he makes, head pounding. “Fine, whatever! Do whatever you want.”

Tsuna regrets his words almost immediately, as Ken jumps to his feet and makes a beeline for the fridge, throwing it open and rifling through it. He watches in near awe as the jars on the side of the fridge rattle, his old, hand-me-down fridge protesting the treatment. 

Ken looks back at him, tongue poking out slightly. “Oi, idiot, don’t you have anything better than this crap in here?”

“ _Hey!_ You stop that—ugh.” 

He tugs at his hair as Ken just continues digging through his—admittedly sparse—fridge, pulling out whatever suits his fancy, ignoring his protests entirely. Chikusa eventually strides over, peering over Ken’s shoulder to scout out what there was to eat. From the other room, he hears a lyrical _‘kufufufu.’_

Tsuna sighs.

* * *

He stares at his bathroom door, dejected. He’d bought some duct tape on the way home, hoping to somehow tape the damn thing back together while he agonized about how to replace it without his landlord noticing, but looking at the scene now, he realizes it’s hopeless. The only thing really left of it was the chunks of the door still attached to the hinges, one of which had been torn out of the doorframe entirely. There were wood chips everywhere, in the bathtub, in the hallway, all over the floor. The lock was busted, bent and twisted, rendered entirely unusable.

He looks at the mess that is his only bathroom, and then he looks at the culprit. The man clearly feels Tsuna’s eyes burning holes into the back of his head, because he twists around to catch them, raising an eyebrow before smiling at him placidly.

Bastard.

The other three are scattered around his living room, with Ken and Chikusa bickering over the snacks splayed out on the coffee table, while the creepy, silent man leans up against the wall, barely even breathing as he—presumably—spaces out.

Even though this is _his_ apartment, the man seems to have no interest in being respectful of his space, simply turning back around to idly watch his cohorts bicker. (No, Tsuna was not going to call them underlings: that was _weird._ )

Tsuna presses the palms of his hands into his eyes, massaging them slightly. He’d have to see if Kyoko had a spell on how to fix this. She always had some neat trick or charm up her sleeves, probably a side effect of studying it for the past six or seven years. He felt slightly envious of her, honestly; learning to be a Mage would have really helped him out when he was fifteen. 

Squaring his shoulders, he musters all five foot six inches of himself and marches up to the group. 

At first, they ignore him, even though Tsuna can see their eyes slide towards him for a moment before going back to whatever they were doing before. He stands there for a moment, suddenly feeling extremely awkward, before clearing his throat. Loudly.

That gets their attention, with Ken spitting a rude _“the hell do you want?”_ at him. 

Tsuna wants to get angry, he really does, but he bites his tongue. “If you’re all going to start cras— _living_ here, we’re gonna have to lay down some ground rules.”

Ken simply scoffs, while Chikusa looks at him nonplussed. He adjusts his knitwear hat, fiddling with the edges, before returning his hands to his lap. Rokudo’s smug smile stiffens slightly. None of these are good signs; which is why Tsuna relishes in ignoring them.

He puts up a single finger, putting up additional fingers as he counts off the rules. “Rule number one: no breaking things! I’m the one who has to pay for it, remember? Don’t break my place, otherwise, you’ll all be out a place to stay, too. Rule number two: don’t bother the neighbors. I don’t want to find my neighbors dead or the police at my door— _ever._ Rule number three: do not answer the door if I’m not here!”

“Is that it?” Ken scowls, gazing at him like he was gum under his shoe. 

Chikusa, deigning to speak to him for the first time since Tsuna walked in the door the day before, chimes in. “Is that not self-explanatory?”

Rokudo looks at him with something almost resembling pity, if not for the nearly mocking lilt to his voice. “Sawada, we are world-renowned criminals, you should have picked up on this already… though I suppose it was too much to hope for that you’d understand such things. We’ve had people after us for a very long time—this is simple.”

Tsuna chokes the rage down, burying it under the crushing resignation he’s experiencing nearly round the clock. “You’re _WHAT?_ No, wait, actually—don’t tell me. I don’t want to know! I’ve had enough surprises already. My father being a _mobster,_ apparently, is already too much to handle. Christ.”

The university student pinches the bridge of his nose, clenching his teeth. Why was every conversation with these people so frustrating? It was almost like every interaction was designed to annoy him as much as possible.

“Besides,” Ken says, shoving his last package of potato chips into his mouth, “aren’t you Mafia, too? You’ve got that aura—flames or whatever.”

This sends his racing mind grinding to a halt, confusion rippling over his features, “the what?”

Rokudo smirks at this, like Tsuna’s confusion is funny, somehow. “Flames, of course... a power that activates upon a confrontation with death! If a mafioso has strong enough regrets, they may _“come back”_ from death. Typically on fire, or coated in a strange aura.”

“You mean... Some kind of magic?”

“I wonder, the phenomenon has been described as feeling like your body is falling to pieces, yet being possessed by a kind of strength that makes you feel as if you could do anything. There are seven kinds: Mist, sun, storm, rain, lightning, cloud, and sky. They vary in rarity, however.”

“So… magic.”

He raises an eyebrow. “No, Flames. Not magic.”

Furious, Tsuna ignores him. He was being _played_ with, and he hated it, “were you lying to me this whole time? Was this some—some kind of plot? I knew something was off, that’s how you got around the anti-intruder spell! It was a _ruse!”_

At this, Rokudo actually gets annoyed, “if I could use the power you used, I would not be asking you to teach it to me. Maybe it is magic, maybe it isn’t… but whatever you used is not something I was... aware of before. If I was, I’d have killed you by now.”

“You know, I shouldn’t have told you this, either,” he continues, pleased with the irony of it all, “it’s a _very_ well kept secret, and there are absolutely _dire_ consequences for revealing it. You’re lucky, Tsunayoshi!”

“Firstly, don’t call me that,” Tsuna bites out, he doesn’t _understand,_ “secondly… why’d you tell me? If it’s so dangerous… Why tell me, of all people?”

That damned smile nailed to his face only grows wider, eyes crinkling in a way that would have been real on anyone else but appears extremely unsettling on the blue-haired freeloader. “Why did you tell me?” he retorts, lobbing Tsuna’s words back at him with utter glee.

His first response is that of every response he’s had while talking to these people, sheer unadulterated rage, but then-

Tsuna gets it. Not in a comprehensive way, in a way that he could confidently put into words, articulate eloquently, but in a basal, intuitive way, a sort of… subtle manner. He looks into Rokudo’s eyes, anger banking and he understands. 

This was… an offering. They were conceding something, showing a slight vulnerability that they absolutely did not have to—not against him, anyway.

He doesn’t get the bigger picture, doesn’t know how to make heads or tails of organized crime and secret powers that only some could unlock (though he half thinks it’s just some obscure form of magic, anyway), but he does get that they’re… trying to survive, to do… something. To see the next sunrise. And, really, isn’t he trying to do the same?

He doesn’t think they’re good people. Clearly, they very much aren’t, but it… put things in perspective, somewhat.

Tsuna just wishes they would crash somewhere else. A cheap hotel, maybe?

He clears his throat, wondering when it’d gotten so dry. “Uh, hey…” he struggles with the words for a moment, ruffling his hair in discomfort, wrestling his own tongue because he _needs_ to ask. “Um—where, uh, where were you staying before this, anyway?”

He can feel that he’s made a mistake as soon as the words leave his tongue, watching as the group of him shut down all at once, nearly bristling as their faces shutter.

“That’s not something for you to be concerned with,” there’s no aggravating smile on Rokudo’s face as he says this.

“Mind your own business!” Ken nearly growls, peppering in a few additional insults to enhance the message.

Chikusa simply turns away, if possible hunching in on himself even further than he already was.

(Tsuna isn’t even really paying attention to the last guy. At this point, Tsuna’s convinced he’s just been spaced out the entire time. He’d have to get his name at some point, though, because there was no way he could just keep calling him “creepy tall guy” in his head.)

A heavy feeling presses down on the room, lasting all the way up until Chikusa pushes up his glasses and says matter-of-factly, “don’t get arrogant. We’ve stayed in much nicer places before.” He is clearly eyeing the space where his bathroom door would have been.

Tsuna notices this, of course, and fists his hands in his hair, exasperated, “and whose fault is that?!”

Rokudo laughs at him, rolling his shoulders in a mocking imitation of a shrug. God, if Tsuna had his way, he’d have throttled him by now.

“Whatever,” he huffs, turning away. He’s going to go take a nap and ignore the world for a while. He mutters under his breath, grumbling about how he hopes he won’t be murdered in his sleep.

Truthfully, Tsuna’s famished, and while under literally any other circumstances he’d make himself a little something before going to bed, the thought of eating makes him want to hurl. All this talk of… crime, and murder, and rule-breaking has effectively quashed his appetite, and he wanted nothing more than to curl up in bed and cease to exist for a little while.

He’d be damned if he didn’t get the chance, and even though Tsuna had a class in an hour and a half, he’s… nearing his breaking point. If he pushes himself any further… he doesn’t know what he’ll do. Nothing pretty, probably.

He’ll skip.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! If you want to see more of my content, as well as writing updates, I'm also on Tumblr! 
>   * [Main Blog](https://ekourege.tumblr.com/)
>   * [KHR Blog](https://khrmutual.tumblr.com/)
> 



	4. Exploration I

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rokudo Mukuro receives his first magic lesson… and Tsuna quickly comes to realizes he’s not a very good teacher.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We’re finally getting into the good stuff - the magic! Mukuro’s going to discover more and more about the world he’s just stepped into, and find it much different from the one he’s familiar with. But, is it different, really? The relationship between Tsuna and Mukuro continues to be antagonistic, but hey! What’s new. 
> 
> Apologies for putting up this chapter a little late, I kinda forgot about it until it was nearly midnight, haha. But it’s here now! As always, thanks to [KnightPunk](https://archiveofourown.org/users/KnightPunk) for editing this chapter!

Something’s beeping. An incessant, continuous kind of beeping, piercing through the fuzz clouding his brain and dragging him back to awareness. He reaches out slowly, lazily stretching forward to awkwardly slap the snooze button on his alarm clock, grumbling slightly as he shifts and tries to get comfortable again. It was comfortable, warm and cozy, and he wanted to soak up as much as he could before his alarm went off again.

He’s nearly dozed off again when he remembers himself. _Mafia, magic, criminals bunking in his apartment, right._ He blinks himself awake, pulling himself into a sitting position. He feels… oddly refreshed for the first time in a good while until he realizes that it was his alarm for school going off, and that it was morning the very next day.

Tsuna must’ve crashed. Hard.

Well, he wasn’t dead or stabbed or anything, Tsuna reasons, so he considered that a plus. Yawning, he rubs the sleep out of his eyes, shutting off his alarm entirely before grabbing his phone. He unplugs the charger and turns it on, absently swiping through his notifications.

He pauses, blinking before his heart turns to ice. On the screen, stacked together, are notifications of _five missed calls from Kyoko._

Shit, was it something important?

He immediately gets to his feet, nearly jumping out of bed as he hurries to call her back. 

The dial tone rings once, twice, and then three times, cranking his anxiety up one notch every time, until there’s a click of the phone being picked up.

Kyoko’s concerned voice flutters through the other end, “Tsuna-kun, did something happen? You weren’t answering my calls!” 

Tsuna chuckles nervously, “No! No—definitely not. Nothing happened, I was just… tired! Exhausted, more like.”

“Oh,” Kyoko says, sounding almost stumped. “Was it that bad?”

Tsuna’s free hand comes up to rub at his neck, another odd habit he’d been unable to shake. “Uh, yeah. You’ve got no clue, Kyoko-chan, I was nearly falling asleep standing up! And, then, well, I got home and I crashed immediately!”

At this Kyoko makes a noise of surprise. “You missed your next class?!”

He flinches, _‘shit. That didn’t help my case.’_

“Ah, um… yeah,” he says lamely, unsure how he could’ve salvaged the direction of the conversation anyway. Ugh.

“I knew that oversleeping habit of yours would be a problem!” she huffs, sounding more worried than exasperated, “Tsuna-kun, you _have_ to take better care of yourself! You can’t stay up so late if it’s going to cause you to miss your classes!”

“Yeah yeah, I know…” Tsuna grumbles. He’s heard this exact same lecture multiple times. And what with his current situation… he knows it’s a promise he can’t keep.

“I’m serious! I’ll come over there if I have to!” 

He freezes, hand tangled in his hair dropping to his side. “Please don’t,” he says, voice small.

The voice on the other end softens, “I will if you don’t start going to bed at a reasonable hour.”

“Okay, okay! Fine, I’ll be sure to sleep before midnight—no more staying up late playing video games for me, okay?”

“Good, that’s what I like to hear!” Kyoko replies, sounding cheerful once again, “I’ll see if I can get you the notes for the class you missed, I don’t want to see you fail your exams, after all!”

He blinks, a grin forming on his face. “Eh? Really? You’d do that for me?”

“Jeez, who do you take me for? Of course I would!”

“...Thanks, Kyoko-chan.” Tsuna means it when he says he has the best friend in the entire world. No one else would’ve gone to such lengths for him _before._

“You’re welcome, Tsuna-kun. Anyway, how did the presentation go?”

“Oh, it was, um, a trainwreck to put it mildly,” he groans, not wanting to even _think_ about how his grade would turn out for that project.

“Oh my god, you have to tell me everything. Please, Tsuna-kun?” he can hear her brighten over the phone and has to physically restrain the urge to groan.

“Well, it’s kind of a funny story…”

* * *

After he’s finished regaling the tale of his disastrous presentation to Kyoko and ended their call, Tsuna decides it’s time to actually face the day. He has time to kill before his first class for the day, so it’s just the... freeloaders... holding him back from actually leaving his room.

Tsuna pads into the hallway, still in his pajamas and intent upon getting himself some breakfast. He’d managed to wrangle Kyoko into studying with him that upcoming Monday without too much of a fuss, something he was grateful for—questions of any kind about his life were extremely inconvenient at that moment.

Rubbing the corner of his left eye with his knuckles, he makes a beeline for the kitchen, only to nearly run into Rokudo. Tsuna shrieks, a short, high-pitched sound of fright that has him ducking out of the way and clutching his chest. “What was that for?” he wheezes, trying to get his racing heart under control.

Rokudo ignores his question. “If you needed notes… I could get them for you.” the man says, leaning against the wall using his elbow. “It wouldn’t be hard.”

He’d been eavesdropping. Damn it. And anyway, why the hell would he do that? Last Tsuna recalled Rokudo was trying to kill him. So, that begged the question… why was he offering to help him with something so... Mundane. Life-saving! But utterly, absolutely mundane.

There had to be a catch.

“Um, I think I’m good,” Tsuna says slowly, deciding to avoid the entire thing altogether, “You probably wouldn’t know anyone who has them anyway, so…”

The smile he gives Tsuna is all teeth. “Wouldn’t I, though?”

What?

He says as much. “Uh, what?”

Rokudo _stares,_ raising his eyebrows slightly. Tsuna frowns at him in confusion, scrunching his nose. The man tilts his head, and Tsuna gets the _very_ strong impression he’s being fucked with.

“Anyway,” he says, looking anywhere but at the lanky man in front of him, “I, uh, have to—I have to use the restroom. Yeah.”

Taking Rokudo’s silence as an affirmative, Tsuna quickly skitters out of the kitchen, breakfast and all other thoughts of eating forgotten.

Upon seeing the restroom again, he realizes that he’d have to have something… covering the door, at least, until he could get it fixed. The university student sighs, wishing he had to deal with anything else but a homicidal gang of… mafia men? That didn’t sound quite right, judging from the way the group (most of them, anyway) had actually talked about the mob, but he… didn’t exactly know what else to call them.

It would do, for now. Besides, what did Tsuna care about addressing them properly? They were the ones who damaged his apartment and decided to move in without even offering to pay rent. The least he should be allowed to do is insult them in his head.

Looking at the messed up hinges, and current lack of suitable replacement, he decides to just. Hang up the extra sheets his mother gave him when he moved in over the door frame and hope for the best. Just in case someone gets any funny ideas, he makes sure to put a sticky note on the wall beside the door, warning people not to enter while it was in use.

He hoped they could read.

The blond one walks up to him as he’s scribbling the message on the square note. “What’s for breakfast, pipsqueak?” he grouses, looking at Tsuna expectantly. The other one isn’t far behind, skulking up to the pair standing in front of the bathroom.

“Ken, you’re being rude,” Chikusa scolds, even though he sounds completely indifferent to the situation.

* * *

Tsuna is unloading his bag after class when Rokudo appears in front of him once again. He’d finished his classes for the day, the four extra people in his apartment once again vanishing into thin air a little before he’d left for his first class of the day.

“Teach me that spell.” he says, and going by the glint in his mismatched eyes, he wasn’t going to take “No” for an answer.

He supposed he’d put it off long enough. He’d broken enough promises… if he was going to break arguably the most important one, the one he made to one of his most important people in the whole world, he may as well follow through. “Alright.” he relents, puttering around for a moment before settling down on the couch. Rokudo, in lieu of having to take the seat next to him, simply sits on the coffee table.

Tsuna clears his throat, “Okay, um, before we begin... I’d like to tell you to keep this quiet? I mean, I’m sure you already know that but… just in case! Seriously, it’d be really bad if anyone found out about me teaching you, especially without going and getting you approved first,” he begins, stomach flip-flopping at the thought of getting caught teaching magic to a criminal. 

Rokudo peers at him with near glee, eyes shining, “so we’re both criminals! How quaint.”

“Don’t laugh!” Tsuna blusters, “if anyone found out I was teaching you things would be super bad for me!”

“Funny, it’s the same for me.”

“Well, you’re a murderer, so already it’s different.”

“Is it?”

“Can I just get on with my explanation already?!” Tsuna groans, eyes twitching.

“Go ahead!”

Sighing, he launches back into it. “Generally, there are spaces where people who use magic—Mages—go to talk to other Mages, but there’s nowhere really “official” and what those spaces are tends to change from place to place. But the main thing is, don’t reveal your magic to non-mages. Just, don’t do it. There’s a method to use when people accidentally stumble upon something they shouldn’t have, but, uh… I don’t really know how to use it yet… hence… this.” Tsuna scratches at his neck, gesturing to the rest of his apartment and towards Rokudo himself, “so if you’re going to use it, please make an effort to hide it. Either as… Flames? Or whatever they’re called, or… I don’t know, a trick of the light! Something.”

The man looks at him, an unreadable expression on his face, “If magic can be taught, why is it kept a secret?”

“Why are Flames a secret?” Tsuna retorts.

“Hmm… good point,” he concedes.

“Yeah. Anyway, since you’re on the… other side of the law, Rokudo, I’m not actually… allowed to teach you magic? Under conventional wisdom, I really should’ve let you just kill me. But! Never mind that, that doesn’t explain what magic _is.”_

“Yes, I’ve been waiting for you to get to the point for five minutes. Also, call me Mukuro, Tsunayoshi,” he grins, the kind that’s all bite and false kindness. Clearly, he’s getting on Rokudo’s nerves. 

“Rokudo-”

“It’s Mukuro.”

Tsuna groans. He really doesn’t want to be any more familiar with this man than he already is, “fine, Mukuro. Can I continue on now?”

He should speed his explanation up a bit.

“Of course, by all means, don’t let me stop you.” 

Tsuna ignores the jab. He also ignores the way Mukuro suddenly has his trident in his hands. Pointedly ignores it.

“Magic is—hm. Magic is kind of like an… energy? Yeah, energy you produce. Like—like blood! It doesn’t have… pathways specifically, but channeling it through your body in particular ways can make using it more effective.”

“You know, Tsunayoshi, you’re an absolutely dreadful tutor,” Mukuro remarks, as if he wasn’t the one to put Tsuna, new to magic and highly unqualified, in this position in the first place.

“Don’t call me that. Magic is just… like, your energy. Your will power. Making spells _work_ is, um, all about properly molding and channeling your own wants into something more concrete. If you want something hard enough, you can, theoretically, Call the magic for it. There are six different categories of magic, and some Mages have more of an affinity for a particular kind of magic over the others. It really just depends on the person, I think. I don’t know—Mages aren’t exactly common,” he chuckles nervously at this, kind of just hoping his stuttering rambles will do.

He wasn’t a teacher after all, and it wasn’t like he could just google the definition! Damned Vows.

“Oh?” Mukuro says leaning forward slightly, more interested in his words than before, “what are they?”

“They—they’re Illusionary, Elemental, uh… Space and Time, Charm, Organic magic and… um… what was the last one—oh! And Cognitive magic.”

Mukuro’s brow twitches. “Cognitive magic?”

“Yeah, it’s mostly made up of spells that manipulate the mind or what someone knows… or how they know it. Like, clairvoyance! Clairvoyance spells are cognitive magic because they use magic to obtain something… they change the method in which they find something. At least, that’s how it was explained to me?”

“So if I were to, say, take control of someone’s mind, would that be Cognitive magic?”

“...Mind control was your first thought?”

“Yes, why wouldn’t it be?”

He sighs, “I should have seen that coming, honestly.”

Mukuro simply laughs at him before launching back into the discussion, “that spell, the one you used the first night. What kind of magic was it?”

“The protection spell, you mean? It’s a Charm, it uh, protects my body from being damaged.”

“I see… teach me the Charm spell, then.”

Tsuna stops in his tracks, tangling his fingers together in dismay, “about that…”

“You can’t?” There's something about the way he says it that tells Tsuna he’s dead meat if he answers wrong. Uncomfortable, he shifts slightly, readjusting his position on the couch to something slightly more comfortable. It almost felt like there was something heavy on his chest, cloying and dark. Probably anxiety from an uncomfortable conversation, Tsuna thinks, trying to brush it off.

It wasn’t the same kind of discomfort, of acrid fear, that he’d experienced in the hours leading up to Rokudo’s appearance and subsequent attempted murder, so he wasn’t sure what, exactly, to make of it. Tsuna continues.

“No! No I can, um, it’s just that I can’t right away.”

“Why not?” Mukuro looks at him impatiently, shoulders stiff from where he’s sat on the coffee table, leaning one hand on the faux-wood and the other tightly gripping his trident.

“Because, well… you don’t even know what your magic feels like. How can you use magic to cast a spell, if you don’t know where it is? What it feels like?! There’s a process to these things, you know!”

“Well, find a way to hurry it up. I don’t have time to waste fooling around with you.” The trident winks out of existence.

“I just told you, I can’t! Jeez, Mages do things a certain way for a reason! Most people have no clue what magic would even feel like, much less what it’s like to call it successfully.”

“I’m not like _most_ people,” Mukuro glares at him, eyes narrowed. Tsuna just kind of wants this to be over already.

“That’s true,” he mutters under his breath, aggravated now.

“Did you say something?”

Tsuna flinches, “No-nothing! Nothing at all.”

A slight huff, “I thought so.”

Bastard.

“So, with that in mind, practicing magic isn’t like… doing whatever you want. I don’t know much about them, honestly, but I do know that there are two levels of oversight that Mages are under. There are local councils and international councils. Sort of like a government? Except _way_ looser. Mages aren’t actually in contact with one another all that much, there’s a sort of… wall between everyone that means we mostly keep to ourselves—oh, but that’s just around here! It could be totally different from place to place, I think. But they make the rules, basically. They also officiate spells!”

“Do spells need to be ‘officiated’?”

“Well, not exactly? But making a spell official means it goes... Public? I guess? Which is the goal of a lot of Mages, most people learning magic are studying it, trying to make their own.”

Mukuro hums at this, rubbing his chin lightly. “Are you?”

“Uhm… no,” Tsuna rubs the back of his neck. “I mean? Maybe? Sometime in the future. It’s… complicated.”

This earns him a knowing smirk. He ignores it, “Anyway, there’s one more thing they do that I can think of. What was it?” It was on the tip of his tongue, something tugging at his brain lightly. But he couldn’t exactly remember…

He snaps his fingers, “That’s right! They also doll out the Vow of Secrecy! Right—it’s like a thumbprint. You go to your local council and make your vow, and they record your magical signature.”

“Do I have to do that, as well?” Mukuro asks, almost innocently. Tsuna knows it is not innocent.

He looks away, tugging at the hair at the base of his neck. Honestly, he’d have to do something about his nervous habits, all this fidgeting was giving away his discomfort way too easily. Kyoko had always said he was an open book. “Regularly, yeah. But this is, um, a special case. So, no. Because if we approached them I think both you and I would be arrested immediately.”

Tsuna shivers. He’d only been near the local magic council once, but there was something so… stuffy about them. Older, wiser, more experienced than him. It wasn’t friendly at all, and Tsuna was sure if he set foot in a council room ever again they’d be able to smell the broken rules on him.

How they’d be able to figure it out, he didn’t know, but they definitely would. Somehow, some way. “Um, just don’t worry about it for right now.”

Mukuro shrugs, the pressure on Tsuna moments before easing suddenly- like a heavy blanket pulled from his shoulders. 

So he _had_ been doing something freaky, it hadn’t just been Tsuna’s anxiety acting up; he’d have to visit the local magic shop for a stronger charm or… something. 

He’d think about it later.

“Tell me, just what will happen if we’re both caught?” another threateningly benign question.

“Uh, nothing good? Anything from having your memory erased to being executed, even. It really just… depends? I don’t exactly know how it all works, sorry. Just, just don’t try and piss them off. It won’t end well for either of us—or your friends either.”

“You’ll just have to make sure we don’t get caught then, hm?”

“ _Me?_ Why is it just my responsibility?!”

“Last time I checked, you’re the one who told me you’re a magician,” he says offhandedly, tapping at his head in a mocking manner. 

“Wha— _ugh._ Okay, whatever. Also, we’re _mages,_ not magicians.”

“What’s the difference?”

“Everything!”

This earns him a laugh, Tsuna just puts his head in his hands.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! Thoughts, theories, and commentary all welcome.


	5. The Devil’s at Your Heels

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tsuna catches a break.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies for taking a longer break than intended, time kind of got away from me with the holidays and all! Have a new FYH chapter to make up for it.

Tsuna leaves his apartment with great relish, nearly singing as he closes and locks the door behind him; the taunts of his “roommates” bouncing harmlessly off him, his mood blocking any and all injury where it once would have struck true. 

_Ha!_ Take that, Ken, he wasn’t soft-hearted! They’d just caught him at a bad time, that was all. 

(It wasn’t really true, but he was too pleased with himself, too happy to be free of the gang and their complications for a little while to really care.)

It’d been a couple of days since Mukuro had demanded his first Magic lesson and Tsuna was aching to be free of him. Unfortunately, the weekend had hit before he knew it, and by a stroke of bad luck, his only shift was early on Sunday, meaning he was stuck with Mukuro and his gang for the majority of the time. Just thinking about it made him want to groan—it turned out that Chikusa had a strange weapon of some kind: a set of yo-yos with _spikes_ in them.

It also turned out that, like the others, he was not conservative about their usage. The collection of holes in Tsuna’s walls grew by the hour.

Finally, though, the weekend had come and gone and his next study session with Kyoko had arrived. After numerous delays and obstacles, he was finally getting back to something normal, something _familiar._ Something that wasn’t mafia or strange magic-but-not, killers raiding his fridge, or the new, heavy secrets he now had to keep tucked close to his chest.

Tsuna had never been a goody-two-shoes, his truancy records from middle school dashed _that_ particular notion straight away, but he hadn’t been some kind of delinquent. He hadn’t been against lying either, but he’d never been particularly skilled at doing it, so on the whole he tended to avoid fibbing in the first place. This, however, was _important._ It was an important lie to keep, to maintain.

Because… he wasn’t there yet. Wasn’t successful yet—hasn't followed through on all his promises yet. He couldn’t… go to Mage Jail or whatever, or end up dead in some ditch somewhere because _Mafia_ , because he hadn’t done what he’d promised yet.

_“Tsu-kun, just what are you planning on doing with your life? You can’t just lay in bed and mope forever! Ah, my no-good son… what am I going to do with you?”_

_“Nothing, Mama, it’s hopeless. Just… give up already, okay?”_

_“Tsu-kun, just because you flunked the exam doesn’t mean-”_

So, for his own sake, he’d swallow the proverbial key whole and bury those secrets far, far away from anyone else's reach.

Right. The study session with Kyoko. He was going to meet her after class to head to the library, except, this time, not for a project he sorely needed to finish. No, this time, he was there for something much more fun.

He just had to sit through this class… just this one and then he could get to today’s main event.

* * *

His face lights up as soon as he sees Kyoko, he’s sure, but he doesn’t have it in him to feel bad about it. He’s been aching for a friendly face, and he’s comforted in seeing Kyoko’s face light up just the same as his does, a wide smile stretching from ear to ear as she walks faster, closer.

“Tsuna-kun, hi! Long time no see!” she says cheerfully, waving as she comes to a stop in front of him. He’d been waiting outside the lecture hall for about ten minutes by that point, feeling increasingly nervous as the time on his phone ticked on, so he was glad to see she’d finally made it. She had class on the other side of campus, so he tried to be patient.

But, still, something about standing in one place, waiting as the clock ticks on, is nerve-wracking. Tsuna couldn’t help but hope that every single person that passed through the hallway would be her, and could feel his heart drop increasingly far as stranger after stranger appeared, passed him, and disappeared.

“Hey, it’s good to see you!” Tsuna greets in return, he’d managed to get into something slightly more presentable than a hoodie and a pair of wrinkled pants, so on top of being temporarily free of Rokudo Mukuro and friends, he felt moderately fashionable for the first time in a while.

“Did you wait long? Sorry, it was a bit of a walk,” she apologizes, clutching her bag slightly.

He’s quick to reassure her, “no, not at all. I was just... I was just on my phone, you know? It was no big deal, really.”

“Alright, good. Shall we go, then? I think you’ve stood in the middle of the hall long enough.”

He flushes, remembering himself, “ah, yeah. Good idea.”

* * *

They’d first gone to the library, entering with little fanfare and greeting the librarian quietly. Tsuna was pleasantly surprised to find that sometime over the weekend Kyoko had managed to get the notes he’d missed, despite the fact that she wasn’t even registered for that class.

He’d known that Kyoko was well-liked, a bit popular, knowing quite a few of their peers but the fruit of that popularity always took him by surprise. 

His only friend was Kyoko herself, after all. He was on friendly terms with a few of Kyoko’s other friends, and he got along fine with classmates and co-workers for the most part, but that was about it. That made him seem more pathetic than he was, Tsuna knew, and to some extent, he’d agree with that analysis. 

Except... he was leagues ahead of where he was just a year and a half ago, so if he only had one person he’d really call a _friend,_ then so be it.

He knew what being alone felt like. Being truly, utterly alone—with no one in your corner or willing to fight for you. Knew the soul-sucking, soul-crushing consequences of being isolated from everyone, scorned for just about everything, even if it was just existing. He _knew_ alone.

Sawada Tsunayoshi was not alone. And even if it didn’t make sense to anyone else, he was going to cling to that sentiment, _thank you very much!_

Sitting down in the usual spot—a secluded section towards the back of the library, situated with several small, well-worn tables only able to fit one or two people at the most—he’d pulled out his notebook and gotten to work copying and reviewing the notes, with Kyoko pulling out a textbook and a spiral of her own. They spent the next hour idly, chatting lightly about what they’d done over the weekend and simply drinking in the comforting presence of friends. 

The both of them had a rather hectic life as of late, Kyoko with her dance classes, and Tsuna with his… everything. 

He’d had to lie a couple of times, nearly flinching every time he saw confusion flicker across her face or her eyebrow crease slightly. He could practically hear how forced and awkward he sounded but was thankful when Kyoko responded to his words at face value, picking up on the fact that there was something he wasn’t willing to talk about.

She probably assumed that he’d tell her eventually, that he’d work through it and she’d get the truth—as she always did up until now. 

_Fat chance,_ he was taking all knowledge of Rokudo to the grave. He was taking his on-the-side tutoring to the grave, as well. He’s sure that not even his _ghost_ would breathe a word of it. No one would have to know.

Either way, the conversation continued, Tsuna successfully managed to copy and review the notes from last class with a bit of help from Kyoko—with her reading off a definition and Tsuna having to recall it from memory. A time-honored method of rote memorization.

Kyoko looks up at Tsuna, cocks her head slightly as if she isn’t sure whether or not she should say what she’s about to say. She nods slightly, resolute, before clearing her throat to get his attention.

“Yeah?” he says, raising a single eyebrow, wondering what all the fuss was about. 

“We haven’t had a lesson in a while,” she says, almost thoughtful, “and I have a new, um, study guide to show you. We still haven’t finished the last one, anyway!” 

_Oh._ He nods rapidly, excited, “yes! Yes, please. God, I’ve been itching to get back to our regular routine, I know we were supposed to have a _lesson_ last Wednesday but… you know how that turned out.”

“Well, that’s done and over with now, so… how does this tomorrow sound?” she asks. Tsuna mentally tries to remember his work schedule for the week.

“Yeah, sure! My next shift isn’t until the day after tomorrow, anyway. We could meet around… three-ish?” he suggests, absently flicking through his calendar app, attempting to sort through all the abbreviated notes and slapdash due dates he’d sloppily stuck in there. He curses his past self for not being more thorough, as he can barely understand half of these.

“Hmm, I have lunch with Haru at two, so could we maybe move it a little… later? Maybe around four-thirty?”

“Okay, that’ll work!”

They haggle things out for a little while longer, before settling on a time. He always felt a bit silly when talking about magic lessons in a shoddy code, but there was really nothing to be done about it. It wasn’t like they could just talk about it in the open, no filters or anything.

That would be illegal.

It’s on their way out of the library that Tsuna broaches the subject, “Hey, Kyoko-chan. You wouldn’t happen to have anything for a busted door, would you?”

She peers at him, puzzled, “Would I? Um, I might—wait. Hold on. Di-did you manage to somehow break a door? Which, whose?!”

He gives a nervous laugh, looking determinedly at his feet and not at his flabbergasted friend beside him, “I… maybe, sort of possibly broke my bathroom door? Maybe. It’s a long story, you probably wouldn’t be interested-”

Kyoko physically stops him, lightly grasping at his arm. “Tsuna-kun you broke your door. _Tell me everything.”_

He looks up at her, at her pleading eyes, and he crumbles, “I will, I will! But seriously, I need to know if you know any, um, tips for fixing it. The special kind. I’m kind of on a budget here and I seriously want to keep my security deposit.”

The woman releases his arm, tapping her cheek in thought, “I may have one thing that’ll do the trick. When do you need it done by?”

“The end of the week, preferably. The sooner the better!”

He gets a raised eyebrow in response, “tell me and I’ll see what I can do.”

His shoulders droop, defeated, “it was an accident, I swear. I wasn’t trying to break anything. My, uh, table broke, an accident with a tip I was trying to teach myself, and I was trying to fix it with… another tip. Yeah—and it—it backfired on me. I didn’t mean for it to happen! I even went to the store to get some duct-tape but it’s… well, you’ll see. Please, Kyoko-chan, you’ve gotta help me!” he pleads, feeling a bit choked up. He’d beg if he had to.

His explanation seemed to suffice because Kyoko broke into a small, affection smile. A stark contrast from the stubborn pout she’d held before.

“I will don’t worry! I just haven’t really tried this one before yet, it’s in a booklet my parents gave me last year. I’ve only used the _tip_ for leaky faucets!”

“I’m showering with a blanket taped over the door, Kyoko-chan. I’m in dire-straits here!”

Instead of sending him a sympathetic look like he’d expected, she chuckles. 

“Hey!”

“You have to admit it is kind of funny.”

“To you, maybe,” he argues as they trek down the steps of the building, ambling down the sidewalk with Kyoko one step ahead of him.

“Haru would agree with me!” she says, as if that really even means anything. He makes a wordless noise of disbelief.

“It’s _Haru,_ of course she’d agree with you!”

“What’s that supposed to mean?!” she bursts out in mock-offense, knowing she’s got him trapped with that line. 

Tsuna simply clicks his tongue and looks away, “you know exactly what I mean,” he pouts.

A mistake, as Kyoko seizes the opportunity to jab him in the ribs. He chokes, squeaking as his hands clamp down on the afflicted area.

He shoots the woman a hurt look, she simply sticks her tongue out at him. “Jerk move, Kyoko-chan.”

“You deserved it.”

“I did not!”

They bicker all the way to the train station, parting ways with an agreement to meet the next day for the lesson and emergency repair. He’d almost wanted to move it to that evening, so he could shower in peace as soon as possible, but that wouldn’t give him enough time to hide all the evidence of the other four people living there, so it was another night of a quick, fretful shower for him.

He didn’t mind too much, really, he just didn’t like the threat of being harassed by none other than Rokudo Mukuro himself while trying to wash his hair. 

And, god, wasn’t that a thought? Having to consider a future with Rokudo Mukuro hanging around his apartment, bringing his cohorts along to specifically fuck up his day. What was his life, even? And he’d thought having a best friend teaching him magic was strange. 

He was pleased that he’d gotten to see his friend today, after so long of putting off their usual hangouts, but it was kind of a mood dampener to think about what was waiting for him at his apartment.

He wanted to hope for some way to send them packing but… it probably wasn’t likely. Thinking about the way things were playing out, the things he’d done, it was all so… short-sighted. He was reaping what he’d accidentally sowed, and apparently what he’d sowed was a gang of wanted criminals bunking in his apartment while he taught what was obviously their leader magic.

Magic, the kind that the man may very well use to try and kill him later.

...he’d have to have Kyoko teach him more defense spells sometime.

Tsuna is quick to jot that down in his notes app and shelve the thought for later. Sighing lightly, he simply hopes life will throw him a bone and let things take a turn for the better.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading. If you want to see writing updates and more of my other stuff, consider checking out my main blog. if you're only about KHR content, I have a blog just for KHR as well. 
>   * [Main Blog](https://ekourege.tumblr.com/)
>   * [KHR Blog](https://khrmutual.tumblr.com/)
> 



	6. Exploration II

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Breakthroughs, slip-ups, and weaponized Go Fish. 
> 
> Or, Tsuna finally gets his bathroom door fixed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I think I forgot to mention this, but I've moved FYH to every other Saturday. It's just a little too difficult to manage to remember to update every week, and I always end up forgetting! So instead I'm going to space out updates a little more, and hope that brings a more consistent stream of updates. Thanks for bearing with me! And, as always, thank you to [KnightPunk](https://archiveofourown.org/users/KnightPunk) for editing this chapter!
> 
> After this chapter shit starts getting... a little real.
> 
> Enjoy!

It’s Tsuna who approaches Mukuro the next time, slinking up to where the man is lounging on the couch, eyes closed but not asleep—this he knows from the unfortunate experience of assuming so. The other three members of Mukuro’s little gang were out; where he didn’t know, but that made it the perfect opportunity to start on their next magic lesson.

The sooner he taught Mukuro the protection spell, the sooner the man would leave.

At least, that’s what he hoped would happen. They hadn’t really… agreed to that out loud. 

(He refused to think that the man would try and murder him the second he succeeded in using it. He’d just have to make sure he could Call that spell instantaneously when the time came. Just in case.)

“Mukuro,” Tsuna whispers, trying to catch his attention, stepping closer. He repeats the man’s name, slightly louder this time.

No response. He sighs, “Hey, Mukuro! Hello? Earth to madman!”

Infuriatingly, the man’s eyes stay closed.

Admittedly, Tsuna should _probably_ be more scared of the man than he actually is. That’s not to say he’s _not_ afraid of him, because Tsuna very much is, but oftentimes he finds himself more… exasperated. Frustrated. Any number of negative terms that aren’t exactly fear. The man tends to annoy him way more than he scares him.

Which is weird, because the guy laying on his couch had tried to murder him a week and a half ago.

Had it really only been a little over a week? It’d felt like _ages._

Sick of his antics, Tsuna reaches out to shake him awake, only for a gloved hand to clench around his wrist, quick as a whip. It squeezes painfully, the bone in his arm damn near cracking from the pressure, and Mukuro’s eyes instantly open, red and blue gazing at him sharply.

Tsuna breaks out into a sweat. Maybe he’d spoken too soon about that fear thing. 

“C-Could you let go of my wrist? I wasn’t going to do anything and you’re—ow!—hurting me.”

“Why are you bothering me _now?”_ he drawls, though it’s not spoken harshly, the sound of his voice is still like nails on a chalkboard. 

“Don’t you wanna continue that magic lesson? I-I thought it might be a good time for you to start, um, getting to know your magic. But—maybe I was wrong!” He laughs nervously, but there’s a little pulse of irritation that flares up as he says this. 

Tsuna’s sure to snuff it out as soon as it starts to bubble up, because unlike everything he does that points to contrary, he likes living.

Mukuro stares at him suspiciously for a moment longer, tightening his grip on Tsuna’s wrist. He flinches, and then the man lets go before sitting up, fully alert. He’d been doing some sort of… meditation, he thinks—he hadn’t yet succeeded in getting Mukuro to actually explain to him what he’d been doing, so Tsuna was mostly just guessing. It was something he did frequently when he wasn’t watching his friends chat, disappearing off to who-knows-where, or antagonizing him purely for kicks.

Well, whatever it was, it was quiet and wasn’t destroying his house, so he wasn’t too inclined to criticize it. _For now._

“No, you’d be correct. Since it’s so important to learn before you teach me the spell, I’d rather we get it over with as soon as possible.” 

There’s a little part of Tsuna, bitter and resentful, that feels inordinately smug. When Mukuro says this, he has to restrain the urge to smirk in that same mean-spirited way the man on the couch tended to: pompous and mean-spirited.

Because, really, the next step in learning magic was _notoriously_ frustrating and tedious. Tsuna had almost given up when Kyoko first started teaching him due to this very reason. Infamous, long, tedious, and exhausting, finding your magic was like pulling teeth. Learning to manipulate it, moreso.

Many had tried and failed to learn magic due to this one step, convincing some that they simply had no talent for magic. 

_(He would know, he’d thought the same thing after a few weeks.)_

“Alright,” Tsuna nods, surreptitiously taking several steps back. He pitifully rubs at his now sore wrist, wishing Mukuro understood that while he may be a murderer, Tsuna was not. Hurting people wasn’t going to be on his To-Do list any time soon. “I’ll go get the tools for this, but, um, be warned that this part isn’t easy.”

Mukuro, confident in his own grandiosity, actually has the audacity to flip his hair, making a shooing motion.

It would have even worked as intended, if not for the patchy, unkempt pubestache currently growing in. It kind of ruined the whole “suave” look he was trying to give off.

Deciding not to comment and save his breath, Tsuna simply goes to retrieve the needed materials. Luckily for him, this exercise was extremely simple and so there was only one thing he needed to grab. Quickly, Tsuna plods into his room and makes a beeline for his backpack, unclipping the buckles and flipping it open. He roots around in it for a moment, pulling out a plain black notebook. He then thumbs to an empty page and tears it out, returning the notebook to his bag once again.

With the blank piece of paper in hand, he returns to the living room where Mukuro is seated, crumpling the page as he walks.

“That’s it?” Mukuro questions as Tsuna holds it out to him. 

“Yeah. This is all about understanding what your magic feels like, so you don’t really need all that much for it,” he replies, making a gentle gesture for Mukuro to take the crumpled paper ball.

The other man, of course, simply opens his hand, implicitly demanding he place it there instead. Not wanting a fuss, Tsuna does so, huffing slightly as he gently places the ball onto his open palm.

“What does my magic feel like, exactly?” he asks, fingering the object now in his grasp absently. He’s in a lax position, draped over the couch cushions in a lazy, sleepy manner.

Not for long, unless Mukuro really was some unparalleled genius the Magic world had never seen before.

“Dunno,” Tsuna shrugs, seating himself on the other side of the coffee table, “it’s your magic, not mine. You remember how I said giving a vow was like a magic signature? Well, it’s because everyone’s magic is slightly different. Magic is all about how much you want something to happen and the strength of your resolve to make it a reality.”

Mukuro frowns, placid face wrinkling in displeasure, “so you’re to tell me you can’t help me with this?”

“Kinda? I can tell you how to do the exercise, but you’ll have to learn what your magic actually _feels_ like for yourself… I mean, I could tell you what mine feels like? For reference? But it feels slightly different to everyone and sometimes it affects the senses differently, too. Like, ah, my teacher… her magic has a sound. Mine doesn’t.”

He hums, tossing the paper ball back and forth between his hands, “I see. So what’s this for, then?”

“Your goal is to fling the paper ball out of your hands. Uh, pro-tip, though, it may be easier to cup the paper ball with both hands. Because you’re just starting out, it’s harder to control how much you’re putting out—not that it really matters for this, because your goal is really just to find and exert your will on the paper in the first place,” sighing, Tsuna tucks his legs under himself and props his hand up with his fist. 

He’d be there a while, he was sure.

Mukuro actually has the audacity to laugh a long, deep chuckle that feels as sinister as it does mocking. 

A sense of foreboding takes root in Tsuna’s gut, and all at once, he’s prickling with regret. 

“I have to say, I’m a bit curious! What does your magic feel like, Tsunayoshi?”

God, maybe being stabbed would have been better. At this rate, trying to navigate Mukuro’s mood was going to give him stress-induced ulcers. “It’s Sawada to you, and it feels… warm. Like a slight tingle in my chest, before it sort of intensifies? Like, I can feel my magic waking up, and it feels like… I have another heart in my chest? In the same place as my actual one, but different. I can almost taste it, especially if I’m Calling my magic verbally. Oh, also, when you’re casting a spell, it’s “calling your magic”—because you kind of have to… ask for it to work.”

“For now, just try feeling for your magic. You’ll know it when you feel it.”

Mukuro nods with a wane smile, and then focuses down at the paper ball in his hands.

Nothing happens.

The minutes tick by Tsuna watches Mukuro’s brows furrow deeper and deeper, face scrunching as he tries to force his magic out. 

He thinks he may know the problem. He was trying way too hard to make something appear, rather than guide his own magic into doing what he wanted.

Or, at least, that’s what it looks like. Even with his slight frown and bunched eyebrows, his face was still decidedly blank.

(Tsuna had to wonder how he’d gotten to know his habits so well. He’d only known Mukuro for a week and a half, after all.)

“Remember, you’re _Calling_ your magic, not _Demanding_ for your magic to work,” he chimes in, after spending nearly five whole minutes watching Mukuro struggle, only for nothing to happen, “you have to _want_ to fling the paper ball, have to want that to happen and want to be the one to do that. Try asking your magic to wake up, rather than forcing it. If you try to force it, well… you’ll be there a while, probably.”

The other man doesn’t acknowledge what he says, but Tsuna knows he listened because there’s a sudden shift in the air. He watches, curious, as Mukuro shifts into a more focused position, hands nearly squishing the ball in his grip. 

“Maybe try visualizing your magic? Maybe if you close your eyes and try to think of it, that would work,” Tsuna encourages, throwing out the suggestion. If he was going to have to teach the man, may as well do it right.

His student—and wasn’t that a funny phrase to call such an arrogant guy?—exhales harshly, closing his eyes. The pressure poking at Tsuna’s skin kicks up a notch, and he can’t help but lean forward over the coffee table as the hair on the back of his neck raises. A shiver passes over him, goosebumps erupting along his shoulders and arms.

Several minutes tick by like that, both of them locked in the moment.

Eyes shut tight, Mukuro twitches suddenly, a slight recoil in his shoulders.

“It’s cold,” he says hesitantly, “except it’s also… fluffy. Like cotton or wool grazing over my skin.”

Tsuna makes a noise, urging him to continue.

“Have you ever had a saline infusion, Tsunayoshi? It feels similar to that, almost. My veins are cold. It’s refreshing.”

“I haven’t, but it’s your magic, not mine,” he replies, blinking, “uh, try moving it into the paper ball. Just see what happens.”

The pressure he’d been experiencing intensifies, sending Tsuna into a full-blown tremble. They’d have to work on how much of his magic he was putting on everyone _else,_ but that was a lesson in control, something for another day.

Suddenly, the paper ball twitches in Mukuro’s cupped hands. Sparks flicker, wavering, like his magic is attempting to grab it, but slips every time, grazing against the paper instead of sinking into it.

Tsuna had crumpled the ball to make it easier to… fill, so to speak. A round shape was easier to fling than a flat, square shape. Calling magic was about precision, about control over yourself, and the outcome of your magic, and bigger objects were better suited for beginners with low control.

He would know, as a beginner himself.

 _’He’s almost there,’_ Tsuna can tell, can see the slight sparks along the crumpled ball in the man’s hands, and against his own judgement, he feels excitement fill him. Despite who Mukuro was, despite the way he’d treated Tsuna up until now, he genuinely, truly wanted to see him succeed in this.

“You have to want it—want it to move more than _anything else in the world._ At this very moment, this is it, this is everything. Lock yourself down and focus. C’mon, you can do it!” he cheers, bent half-way across the coffee table to see better. He trembles, fists clenched, and _hopes._

Mukuro gasps, wild-eyed as the pressure building in the room dissolves as quickly as it’d built up. _So close._

“...We’ll work on it.”

Even though Tsuna’d started the lesson faintly smug at the inevitable failure… why did he feel kind of disappointed? Why had he gotten so excited in the first place? Tsuna was only teaching him magic because the only other option was death. He had no reason to hope for Mukuro’s success, to cheer him on as he accumulated more skills he’d only use for murder. So… why?

Luckily for Tsuna, the door slams open, Ken bounding inside with Chikusa only a step behind him. The silent man whose name he hadn’t yet caught trawls in behind the pair, face dull and dead. At this point, Tsuna was just trying not to think about him.

“What’d we miss?!” the blond cries out, setting down a suspiciously lumpy bag down by the door.

He was trying not to think about a lot of things, actually.

* * *

Tsuna’s in his room fiddling with his phone when he gets the text from Kyoko.

* * *

**Kyoko**

_**3:56 pm**_  
im about to get on the train!!!!  
worry not my friend, we’re gonna get ur door fixed!!!!  
see u soon! (^w^)b

* * *

_Shit._ He’d totally forgotten Kyoko was coming over! He’d gotten distracted trying to teach Mukuro _some_ kind of magic.

 _‘...They’re still here,’_ he thinks in quiet, all-consuming horror.

Jumping to his feet, heart in his throat, Tsuna scrambles for the living room, determined to kick them all out for a little while as fast as possible. He slips as he does so, sliding along the faux-wood of the hallway and knocking into a wall. 

He hisses in pain, tearing up slightly, but powers on, stumbling into the living room where the other four are situated most of the time. 

(He says most of the time because he’d once found Chikusa dead asleep in his _bathtub_ of all places.)

“Listen! Listen—oh my god this is bad—you guys need to leave for a little while.”

There’s immediate uproar from Ken, “no way! There’s only one person in the whole world who can tell me what to do, and you aren’t him!” the man nearly growls in protest. Chikusa nods in agreement.

“Look, I don’t have time to fight with you all about this, okay?! I have a friend coming over _right now._ She’s normal, so you guys absolutely _cannot_ meet her! She can’t see you guys.”

“What’s that supposed to mean, you punk?!” Ken howls, outraged. He raises two clenched fists in the air, it’s more annoying than frightening. Chikusa simply clicks his tongue faintly, before putting a five down on top of the stack.

“Go fish,” he says, deciding the best course of action would be to simply ignore Tsuna.

Ken’s head whips around, and his clenched fists come down to bash on his coffee table, “You can’t do that!”

“Can’t I?” Chikusa replies, face blank but radiating smugness.

Tsuna can’t believe his eyes. _‘Breathe,’_ he tells himself, _‘they’re only doing it to get a rise out of me.’_

He shuts his eyes, trembling. He inhales once, long and deep. Holds it for three counts, then exhales.

He opens them again, glaring at the two. (Ignoring the third, who is simply staring out the window. The only time Tsuna has seen him do anything different is when the man is eating, showering, or standing guard over Mukuro.)

“Look, I get it. You only take orders from Mukuro—God knows why!—but this affects all of you. If you guys don’t evacuate, pronto, and she sees you guys… well, I wonder what would happen if the police came to my house looking for both you and Mukuro?! And, uh, last I recall, you guys are _wanted criminals?”_

He stares at them, expectant, for a moment, tilting his head. Ken shoots Chikusa a look, obviously unhappy, while Chikusa simply stares at Ken. They don’t actually say a word to each other, but Chikusa grabs the cards laid out on the table and stacks them, neatly sliding them back into the card’s package. Ken glares at a wall, not looking at Tsuna.

Tsuna simply sighs in relief, “while you’re at it, could you tell Mukuro not to come back for a while, too? I don’t know where he is right now.”

“Tell him your-”

“Police. Criminals. Mukuro going to jail?”

“Fine, I’ll tell him. Not my fault if he still comes back, though!”

He pauses for a moment, thinking. “...Fair enough.”

A couple of minutes later and the trio are nowhere to be found, and Tsuna sets to work sloppily erasing all evidence of their existence. He quickly rolls up the futon Chikusa sometimes used to sleep on, stuffed the blankets Ken and the third member of their gang used to sleep under his bed, as well as turned the couch cushion with a hole over.

Within ten minutes, it looks significantly better than it had before. He’d honestly almost given up on cleaning, what with the way his apartment tended to get trashed again within half an hour.

Seeing his apartment tidy—well, tidy-er almost made him feel normal again. 

There’s a knock on his door, finally, and Tsuna rushes to open it, apologizing for the mess.

“It’s okay,” she says, “sorry for intruding!” Kyoko blinks as she surveys his apartment, slipping her shoes off, “Tsuna-kun you really did a number on this place, hm?”

Determined not to let her see his face, Tsuna rushes to the kitchen to get her a glass of water, almost giggling with nerves, “uh, yeah… I really should have mastered it during our lessons before trying it...” he laughs, voice wavering.

“Well, you did good on the coffee table, at least, it looks like it was never broken at all!”

He blinks, confused, “um, yeah, I should hope so? I don’t know what I’d do if it were broken.”

There are several beats of silence, and Tsuna feels increasingly awkward as he fills the cup up, attempting to focus on the tap rather than the weird atmosphere.

“...yes, me neither,” she replies, somewhat quieter than before. 

_‘Was it something I said?’_ he thinks, confused, as he Calls his magic, casting a minor cooling spell on the water. His heart pulses, warm as it always is, and the glass chills significantly, now pleasantly cold. He hands it to her, clearing his throat. She takes it, nodding her head in thanks as he shows her the remains of his bathroom door.

“So, um, the door? Can it be fixed?” he asks, twinning his fingers together.

Kyoko, for her part, scrunches her nose, peering at the chunks of wood still left on the hinges intently. 

“Well,” she says, sounding a bit unsure, “we could try? I don’t know if it’ll be the same as before, though. If there was more if it left I could probably make a perfect copy... Is that okay?”

“Honestly? I’ll take it. At this point, I just want to shower with a shut door.”

“Okay! Can you get a screwdriver and hand me the door chunk? This’ll be easier if it’s laid flat on the floor.”

Tsuna nods hastily, thankful, and goes to rifle through his junk drawer.

* * *

“Ready?” Kyoko says, clutching a small locket in her hand. 

“Ready,” Tsuna says, anticipating a slight spectacle. The higher tier a spell was, the flashier it tended to get. 

He sends a singular longing glance towards Kyoko’s channel, the locket, wishing he had such a useful tool. With it, Kyoko could channel her magic directly into the device attuned to her magic, specifically, thus amplifying the power of her spells and making them easier to cast. If only he had something like that...

Ah, such was the privileges of coming from a family of Mages, he guessed. 

With that, the locket in Kyoko’s grasp, clenched against her chest with one hand while the other lays on the wood chunk, begins to glow. The senior mage exhales harshly, before jerking her hand out and crying out, _“Duplication!”_

All at once, power punches out of her and into the room, as the chunk of wood seems to... Melt, like it was being corroded with acid. Then, it stops—liquid wood twisting and stretching into some semblance of a rectangle, as to think as the only edge left on the original chunk. It stretches, wiggling like water in a glass, before settling.

His teacher looks at him, determined, “Tsuna-kun, now! Hurry!” she urges, and Tsuna is quick to follow her lead. He presses the chunk of metal he’d salvaged from the original lock into the newly formed door, breathing out long and slow, the same as Kyoko had.

Breathing, he’d found, was a very important part of Calling your magic. Otherwise, his magic seemed to slip through his fingers, that warm feeling in his chest flickering for only a moment before banking. Tsuna has no verbal Call for this spell, but he grunts anyway, as the metal makes a _pop_ sound, sinking into the malleable door and bulging like metal popcorn for a moment. 

Tsuna struggles, closing his eyes with two fingers still touching the metal piece, trying to clearly envision what the lock had looked like before.

“Breathe!” Kyoko yells, and he does. Inhale, shaky exhale, he pushes his magic forth, through the watery pathway in his arm, down his fingers and into the metal. There’s several more pops and finally, a _cling!_ And then his friend is sighing in relief.

“Did it work?” Tsuna asks, not yet daring to open his eyes.

“Yes, Tsuna-kun, it worked! On the first try, too!” she sounds ecstatic, boosting his confidence enough to peek a single eye open.

In front of him, laid out on the floor, is a new door, doorknob and all.

 _Thank god._ Tsuna’s shoulders drop, and all the tension seems to melt out of him. “We did it…! I can finally shower in peace!” he sighs, wanting to cry from joy. 

He sends a grateful smile to Kyoko, “thanks, you’re a lifesaver. I don’t know what I would have done without you.”

Kyoko, not one to pass up the opportunity to gently tease him, shoots him a wane smile, “I know!”

“You’re supposed to deny it at least a little bit, you know.”

“But it’s true!”

“...I hate that you’re right.”

He’s kind of envious of how much energy she still had, the channel doing most of the legwork for her, while Tsuna was stuck doing it the old fashioned way. It took a lot out of him to cast a new spell successfully. He shoots her a playful glare for the offense.

Come to think of it, he could really go for a nap right now.

Instead, he raises a shaky hand to gingerly give Kyoko a high five.

“You know, Tsuna-kun, I have to wonder where you got all this talent from, just two weeks ago you were struggling to cast manipulation spells at all!”

He decidedly does not tell her it’s likely from all the extra practice he’s gotten from coaching Mukuro. 

He decidedly does _not_ tell her Mukuro exists at all, let alone his merry gaggle of minions.

Not for the last time, Tsuna laughs nervously, “yeah, I wonder…”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Mukuro is a rat man and I'm determined to get you all to see this. He's less than the picture of suave, even though he walks around thinking that he is! Any guesses on why Mukuro's so intuitively good at Magic?
> 
> Thanks for reading. If you want to see writing updates and more of my other stuff, consider checking out my main blog. if you're only about KHR content, I have a blog just for that. 
>   * [Main Blog](https://ekourege.tumblr.com/)
>   * [KHR Blog](https://khrmutual.tumblr.com/)
> 



	7. The Writing on the Wall

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dominoes begin to knock together.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies for the delay, but the action is beginning to drum up!

Tsuna will readily admit he isn’t the sharpest tool in the shed. He was terrible at tests, clumsy at best, struggled to study properly at the best of times, and couldn’t hold a normal routine for the life of him. He’d been that way since he was a toddler, shy and bumbling. It’d even earned him a nickname and a horrible reputation during his schooling days!

He was trying his best to make peace with it, to accept and like the person he was—the person he was becoming. It’d been a long road to get where he was, and part of getting there was learning to accept the parts of himself that were small and bitter, tired, and shriveled. The meaner, resentful bits of himself that had rooted themselves deep in his psyche.

He knew he wasn’t bright, but, really. How had he not foreseen Mukuro invading his workplace, too?

Up until now, the man and his band of scruffy cronies had occupied his apartment almost solely. When they weren’t bothering him at home, they were nowhere to be seen, only to reappear at indiscriminate times with either groceries or an assortment of odd bits and bobs. This had gone on for over two weeks, and somewhere along the way, Tsuna began believing that it would… stay like that, so to speak.

Mukuro and his gang would do what they did, away from him for the most part, and he wouldn’t have to deal with it unless they were at the apartment while he was. A fine arrangement, if you asked him. 

It was annoying at first, yeah, but he was getting used to the company. It wasn’t _good_ company, but he kind of… liked it. There was something about having people around that spawned something warm and mushy in his chest.

It was an unfamiliar sensation, and he was still hard-pressed to identify it for sure.

But nevermind that—Mukuro was at his workplace.

_Rokudo fucking Mukuro was at his workplace. He’d shown up in the middle of Tsuna’s shift just to bother him._

Honestly, he should have known. He really, really should have known. He’d been slacking off a bit when Mukuro’s third minion had entered the store, walked right around the counter, and went straight for the storage room Tsuna was stationed in.

He should have been unloading the hamburger patties from the boxes, but he was actually taking the moment of peace to scroll through his local news feed. It seems there was a serial pickpocket on the loose, or something like that. Apparently, nearly a hundred people had been hit over the past week, a fact that had absently impressed Tsuna.

Unfortunately, he was so distracted that he didn’t notice the man walking—more like sauntering—up to where he was standing.

“Hard at work, are you?” a deep, gritty voice inquires, startling Tsuna out of his wits. Squeaking, he whips his head up towards the source of the noise, nearly dropping his phone. He’s surprised to Mukuro’s minion, in the back room and not in the apartment, where he really, truly, should have been.

It was kind of weird to see any one of them _outside_ of his apartment—and wasn’t that a baffling thought to contend with? But it was weirder to hear the man speak, as he’d gone weeks without even a peep out of him.

His stance was different, too. But he couldn’t put his finger on what, exactly was wrong with it.

“Oh! Um, hi. What, uh, are you doing back here? You know this area is… kinda for employees only. It says so at the front, by the registers.”

“I saw,” he says, simply. Tsuna waits for him to say something else, to apologize for bothering him while he’s working and leave back the way he came, (too much to hope for, apparently) but he doesn’t.

He just stands there, starring down at him with hollow eyes, greasy, slicked-back hair and sunken skin. The bruises under his eyes stark against the shiny, sickly pallor of his skin. He’d tried asking how the silent man was feeling, once, but he hadn’t gotten a response. Deadened eyes had flicked towards him for a moment, piercing deep, before he looked away and proceeded to ignore him.

He didn’t want to be bothered, and as the one who had caused the least damage to his apartment and generally stayed out of the way, Tsuna was inclined to respect that.

So why was he _here?_

“Did you… need something?” he questions hesitantly when the silence gets too awkward to bear.

“Need something… no. But I do… have something to show you.” 

Alright… weird. But… he didn’t seem like he was going to leave unless Tsuna did what he said?

Best to get it over with. He nods.

Then, the man is getting up in his space, looming over him suddenly. Tsuna freezes, eyes widening as anxiety bubbles up in his gut, a rush of icy panic crashing over him. For a moment, he thinks he’s going to die, and squeezes his eyes shut.

He’s sure he’s doomed, would be found dead in the back room of a shitty _fast food joint_ of all places, dying a moronic, pathetic death at the hands of someone he shouldn’t have trusted in the first place when an eerily familiar laugh rings out. A _‘kufufufu’,_ almost, except it’s as if the laugh can’t decide whether to be deep and gravely, solemn, or almost bubbly and arrogant in nature.

“Watch this,” the odd voice says, and he squints his eyes open, begrudgingly.

The tall, looming form of the silent man melts away, revealing… Rokudo Mukuro instead. Holding out a paper ball, inordinately smug.

_‘What the hell?’_ he thinks, thoroughly baffled.

He says as much, too, stumbling back. “What the hell, Mukuro?”

Mukuro ignores him, cupping the paper ball in his hand. He’s silent for a moment, concentrating, and then Tsuna watches in half-shock, half-awe as the ball sparks, pops, and then _flies_ across the room, propelled away from Mukuro’s hands by the man’s own magic.

“It took me over a month to learn how to do that,” Tsuna says numbly, gawking at the ball as it bounces off the wall and rolls to a stop near his feet. He’s not even sure what to make of this. It’d only been a couple days since Tsuna had taught him this exercise.

He looks back at the man, practically radiating smugness, looking entirely too pleased with himself. Ugh.

“...Good job, Mukuro,” Tsuna says, genuinely. He tries not to feel kind of proud as Mukuro’s smirk grows even deeper than it had been moments before.

“Of course, I expected nothing less of myself,” the man huffs, dashing any and all positive feelings Tsuna may have had towards his latest achievement.

“Yeah yeah, I got it, you’re amazing and talented—whatever,” Tsuna groans, “but couldn’t you have waited until I got back from work to show me that? Wait, nevermind that. I don’t care. _How did you even find out where I worked?”_

“How does the saying go… _‘a good magician never reveals his secrets?’”_

A shot of red-hot rage courses through him. Honestly, he has to wonder if Mukuro had cast everything about what he just said made Tsuna want to call off all bets and throttle him, “we’re called Mages, Mukuro, it’s just common sense! Magicians are all about party tricks, this is the real deal. Couldn’t it be more obvious?!”

“That spell with the lighter seemed like a party trick to me, personally.”

Tsuna makes a sound like a dying animal, pulling his work hat off and clenching it in his fists so he doesn’t attack the scoundrel in front of him. He wasn’t going to do this, couldn’t play into his games this time.

He puts it back on, tucking his hair back behind his ears so it’s more comfortable under his hat, “well, you’ve done what you came to show me, now can you please leave? I don’t get off work for another two hours and I need to focus so I don’t get _fired.”_

“Hmm,” Mukuro says, tapping his chin like he’s actually thinking about it, “I don’t think I will.”

The next two hours are absolute hell. 

Despite being several inches taller than him, the blue-haired man was constantly underfoot, bothering him throughout the entirety of his shift. Whether that being watching him from a table for a solid half an hour, to appearing beside him so suddenly it caused him to drop an order (and subsequently have to remake it), to holding up the line at the cash register by chattering at the cashier.

By the end of it, he was at his limit. He swore he’d have no hair left by the end of the year if this kept up because Tsuna was near to tears with frustration. On top of an agonizing shift, he was written up for “bringing a friend to work” five minutes before he was due to clock out, while his manager clucked his tongue at him in disappointment the entire time.

All in all, when Tsuna appeared from the back in his normal clothing, having just changed out of his work uniform, he was about ready to either kill the menace or break down crying. Either one was fine, really. Maybe if he was in prison for murder he’d be free from this.

Hell, all he’d have to do was explain to the judge what kind of bullshit he was being subjected to, and he may even get off scot-free. No one could hold it against him.

He didn’t indulge in his murder-fantasy, however, and simply moped to the door, pushing it open and trudging it onto the street… only to be accosted once again by Mukuro in disguise.

He sighs, resigned to this, “why are you doing this?” he asks, pathetically.

“Ah, well, I’m bored,” Mukuro smiles. It doesn’t reach his eyes.

Tsuna looks off into the distance, where the reddish-orange of the sun was retreating from behind tall buildings, shrouding the pavement in muted yellow. He sighs, long and low. He'd been doing that a lot recently. 

They walk in silence for a few minutes with Tsuna slouched and moody, hands tucked into his jacket pockets and thoughts dark, Mukuro standing tall, with poise, face unreadable.

“Hey,” he tries eventually, deciding to ask the question that been at the back of his mind the entire evening. The sky had turned a brilliant pink, deep and fluffy, with streaks of yellow and a dazzlingly brilliant purple peeking out from behind telephone wires and high-rise apartments.

He can feel eyes on him, burning holes in the side of his head. “Hm?” oddly enough, it was spoken using Mukuro’s actual voice, and not the false voice he’d used earlier.

“I was wondering… why are you disguised as, um, your other minion? What’s his name, anyway? I’m getting kind of tired of just calling him _‘the third one’.”_

“His name is Lancia, though It’s not important. You do remember that I’m a wanted man. I can’t just recklessly show my actual face in public. Lancia is… hm, you could call him my puppet. I suppose you could also call him Rokudo Mukuro, as well. Most Mafioso think that’s what I look like, anyway. It’s kind of funny, no?” he chuckles lightly, almost perversely amused.

Tsuna stops dead in his tracks, brain stalling as he attempts to process what the fuck he just heard, “wait, hold on.” 

Mukuro, Lancia, stops as well, except he doesn’t peer down at Tsuna, instead looking up and around, like he’s listening for something he can’t see, “Mukuro Rokudo, you’re doing _what-”_

A _gunshot_ rings out, causing Tsuna to startle. He hears a faint ping as the bullet ricochets and then he can scarcely even think about what had just occurred before another shot fires off. He freezes, and there’s an arm grabbing his own and physically tugging him up and along. 

He realizes, distantly as Mukuro steers him along, Tsuna stumbling and stuttering the entire way, that someone was trying to _shoot_ them. He cranes his neck, trying to get a good look at who they were running from, only to see several men in dark, extremely formal suits. One of them was even wearing dark sunglasses, god knows why—it was _sundown._

“What the—hey, wait—hey Mukuro—what’s—what the hell is going on?” he stutters, nearly hyperventilating as there’s a flood of milky indigo in his field of vision, and they’re off, winding down a side street with a cloak that feels almost like mist in the morning cloaking them.

_“Why do you need me to teach you magic again?!”_ Tsuna shrieks as they run. He can hear the thunder of footsteps from somewhere behind them, the sound almost as loud as his thundering heartbeat, or the ringing in his ears.

Mukuro, still appearing as Lancia, jerks Tsuna to the left, nearly sending him crashing into the wall. He makes a wordless noise of indignant protest, but the other man doesn’t respond to his complaints. He addresses something else entirely.

“That, my dear Tsunayoshi,” he can practically _hear_ the dripping sarcasm, “was why I was disguised. This world is twisted, _tainted._ It’s beyond saving! You’ll come to understand this: human beings are just tools to be used by other human beings. You’re all toys!”

_“What does that have to do with us being chased by gunmen?!”_ Tsuna screams, if only because Mukuro’s volume had increased over the course of...whatever the hell _that_ was.

“The mafia, of course, Tsunayoshi! They’ve caught up with me. I haven’t stayed in one place this long in over a _decade.”_

Tsuna can feel a stitch cramping in his side, pointy and painful. He wheezes, lagging, even as Mukuro tightens his grip to try and keep them both from slowing. Tsuna winces, knowing that there’ll be a bruise there later—if they make it out alive, that is.

“I can—I think I-I know of a way we can… we can get out of here. _Now,_ ” he wheezes, struggling to run and talk at the same time. He’s sweating, the stuff soaking his collar and his lower back under his jacket. It wasn’t cold enough yet to warrant the number of layers he’d had on in the first place, a mistake he was more sorely regretting.

All at once, the hand yanking on his arm releases him, and he’s face to face with Mukuro, drenched in the same purple-ish aura he was, fuzzy and wavering like the morning mist. “Explain!”

Tsuna, panting, fumbles for his back pocket, rummaging around before pulling out a single key.

“A key?”

He nods, “Mhm, if we—if we just find a door I can take us somewhere where the… uh, mobsters can’t find us.”

“You’re sure we’ll lose them this way?”

“Positive.”

Mukuro looks at him for a long moment, searching for something—anything to indicate that he was lying. Finding none, the man looks away, face twisted. 

“Fine, lead the way.”

“Well, I’d needed to go on a grocery run, anyway…” he grumbles, running a sweaty hand through his hair. He peers at his surroundings for a moment, noting they’d somehow stumbled into the back alleys of the market district, painting them in the deep purples and hazy, numbing gray.

He squints into the dark, looking for—a door! There, by a dumpster a little further down the way, was a door, obviously the back exit of some shop or another.

“There!” Tsuna points, jogging up to it while holding the key.

“Will this key work on this door?” his companion inquires, form hazy and blurred out. The aura that crawled over their bodies was starting to swallow the other man whole, from the look of it. 

“Sort of? It’ll work, but it won’t open in the… regular way.”

“What do you mean?”

“You’ll—you’ll see,” Tsuna shrugs, before shoving the key at and through the doorknob, turning it like one would turn a regular lock. Except, instead of a click, there’s a chiming noise, and the door slides open to reveal… nothing.

There’s no hallway inside, only an opaque, shimmering black that glittered like oil.

“A portal?”

“You got it. Now, hurry! Before they catch up!”

Mukuro lays a hand on his shoulder, physically urging him forward. “You first,” he says as if they weren’t both in dire straits and it was the time for petty suspicion.

“It’s not going to _kill_ you, it’s just a portal!” 

Something shoves at his shoulders, and he gives up. “Fine, alright! Whatever, I’ll go first. Just, promise me that when we get in there you won’t touch anything, okay? Also, this’ll feel, um, very weird. It won’t harm you, though.” 

“I’ll keep that in mind, now go,” he harrumphs.

Without further delay or even an ounce of hesitation, Tsuna takes several steps forward, shivering as the inky tar of the portal sucks him in.

Portals were… odd. Theoretically difficult to cast, but relatively simple in practice, portals were the main way of travel between Magic shops and institutions. They were convenient to use and took way less time than conventional travel methods. The only problem was how flashy they were, the chimes and their strange appearance making it extraordinarily difficult to use in plain daylight… relegating most Mages to regular travel.

A thirty-minute walk was better than a non-Mage catching you entering a portal, after all.

Tsuna would be hesitant to use a portal in this public space, but they were strapped for time and for escape routes, and the last thing on his agenda was ending up dead.

He still remembers the day Kyoko had given him his very own portal key. Six months wasn’t that long for someone learning Magic, but he’d been an almost completely different person, back then.

* * *

_He was at Kyoko’s house, this time, staring at an ornate key in the palm of his hand._

_“This is... For me?” he wonders aloud, eyes tracing the flowery engravings in the head of it, watching the way they wind and twist down the stem of the item before merging to form the cuts and tip. It felt… old in the palm of his hand, like a responsibility he wasn’t yet ready for. He looks up fretfully at Kyoko, almost panicked, “I-”_

_“You’re ready for it, Tsuna-kun, don’t worry. Honestly, this is one of the easiest things to learn, plus you get a neat tool to go with it!”_

_Kyoko’s manicured hand reaches out, closing his fingers around it. She gives his closed hand a little pat, trying to reassure him._

_“What if—what if I mess up?” he titters, still unsure. It was a portal, of all things. What would he do if he messed up somewhere? What if he used the key gifted to him wrong?! The number of ways he could fail, could flub this entire thing and prove once and for all he wasn’t worth teaching—it was almost endless!_

_“You won’t,” Kyoko says, emphatic._

_“How can you be sure?” he fires back, satisfied that she wouldn’t have a sure answer._

_His tutor, and dearest friend, sighs and shakes her head. A move that terrifies and vindicates him in equal measure, comfortable in the knowledge that he was right. He was no good, completely untalented, really unsuited to practicing magic of all things-_

_A finger is stretched out towards him—her pinky. “Here, we’ll swear on it. I swear you won’t mess this up.”_

_“I don’t know-”_

_“Trust me,” she wiggles her finger, encouraging him to mimic the motion._

_Well… it couldn’t… hurt to try, could it? Kyoko had years of experience on him—hell, he’d watched her as she healed his split knee, before! If… if something bad happened… she’d be able to fix it._

_It couldn’t hurt to try… and even if he failed…_

_Kyoko wasn’t like that. Tsuna wasn’t thirteen anymore._

_Swallowing his fear, an acrid concoction of anxiety and insecurity and deep, deep panic, Tsuna sticks a shaky finger out, locking pinkies with Kyoko._

_She shakes their hands once, twice, and then nods. Satisfied. Then she lets go, shaking her fist slightly in a motion of encouragement. “It’ll be fun! You’ll see.”_

_“I—yeah… alright.”_

_Tsuna will learn to trust, little by little. Inch by inch, he’ll shed the hollow shell of the person he used to be, and, hopefully, end up all the better for it._

_It’s almost easy, after that, to shove the key in the lock, and stick his hand straight in._

_He still screams when he’s sucked through, though._

* * *

He’s being stretched, painlessly, pulled every which way for a single moment, a single eternity. He’s nothing, yet encompassing everything. It stretches on and on, like Tsuna does, like his body does, and then he blinks.

Instantly, it’s over, and he’s in the Magic supply shop Kyoko had shown him one day when she was in dire need of a Potion of Instant Growth. 

(An experiment gone wrong, she’d explained to him. She’d been testing a spell that would allow her to draw water directly from the stem of a plant without hurting it. For… reasons. It failed, of course, and Kyoko ended up with several incredibly dehydrated, shriveled plants. Her mother's plants, to be precise.)

There’s another chime, this one slightly different from the opening of the portal. It’s more like the slight beep of an alarm clock, except more ethereal and less electronic. 

Magic, if all else, _sounded_ beautiful.

Trembling slightly, Mukuro, now undisguised, appears beside him. “What… was that?” he grits out, looking seconds away from summoning that damned trident and impaling him with it.

“Told you it would be kind of weird,” Tsuna shrugs, almost nonchalant as he steps in the direction of the powder section, which was slightly to the left of the channel vectors. 

“We should be okay for now,” he sighs, relieved. When he says this, he’s surprised to note that none of the tension Mukuro was holding leaks out, the man stiff as steel as he strides almost robotically behind him.

“We’re alright,” Tsuna consoles, feeling a bit awkward, “I’m sorry for not giving you more detail about the portal, we just—we didn’t have a lot of time, okay?”

Honestly, he wasn’t sure why he was even trying to reassure him. It was like every day he spent in the man’s annoying, frightful presence, their fitful, violent meeting grew farther and further away. He didn’t know why the man was shaking so hard just from a portal, but he wanted Mukuro to know that the jump hadn’t done him any serious harm—and nor could their pursuers follow them here.

“I’m fine,” he grits out, probably harsher than he’d intended, given the way he seems to blink at himself, almost surprised at the lapse in control.

“Alright, alright,” he says, putting his hands up in a defensive gesture, palms out in placation, “I get it, you—you’re peachy keen.” 

_Honestly, murderers and their egos…_

Tsuna peruses the selection, humming slightly as he notes the labels and the colors. He hears Mukuro’s footsteps fall behind him, the man probably curious to know what sorts of trinkets a magic shop would hold.

“What are you looking for, exactly?” Mukuro asks.

“Protection powder, it’ll help keep out pests.” 

“Does the color matter?”

“Uh, no, it’ll go clear when I cast the spell, luckily. Otherwise, I wouldn’t use it.”

“Is that so?”

“Mhm,” he mumbles, picking up a small jar of grayish-green powder. It looks somewhat similar to unbound paint, which Tsuna supposes is kind of an apt comparison. The powder was useless without his magic in it, just a bunch of greenish-gray dust. 

Tsuna decides, on a whim, to pick up several jars of a minor healing Potion, before bringing his choices up to the counter.

“Who’s the new guy, Sawada?” the cashier asks, absently chewing on a stick of gum, more interested in eying Mukuro suspiciously than doing any tricks with the stuff.

It was like a bucket of ice had been dumped over his head, causing him to panic in a way that was slightly different. Less of an “oh fuck I’m going to die” kind of panic, and more of a “deer in the headlights” type of sheer, unadulterated anxiety. He freezes, mouth stuck in a shaky half-smile as he points at Mukuro behind him, “oh, him? He’s my, um, cousin. On my… dad’s side. My family, uh, just brought him into the fold. This is his first time in a Magic store.”

The man stares at him for a moment, silent, before shrugging, “well, welcome aboard, kid. Feel free to look around and see if there’s anything you like.”

Mukuro, like an asshole who makes Tsuna’s life _incredibly_ hard, refuses to respond. Having the audacity to snort and look away, tucking his gloved hands into his ratty, too-small jacket.

Tsuna watches with faint horror as the shop-keeps eyebrows crawl upwards, almost taken aback. He laughs nervously, “he’s uh, a little nervous. First time using a portal, and all that… anyway, we’ll just be going now… have a good day!”

He spins around on his feel, purchases wrapped up in a little leather pouch, and tucked safely into his jacket pocket. As he does so, he shoots Mukuro a truly nasty glare. Seriously, what was that guy’s _deal?_

“When you have a, um, portal key, you can just think about where you want to go and it’ll take you there. Only if you can imagine what its door looks like, of course. It’s a portal, not a teleportation spell!” he rambles as he sticks the key in the door once again, twisting it and hearing the familiar chime once again, “this time it’ll lead to my apartment—uh, Mukuro?”

Tsuna now thoroughly confused, looks back at Mukuro from where he’s stopped dead. He’s staring at the open portal like it’s a gun to his head, like if he steps any closer something _bad_ will happen to him.

It’s disconcerting. He’s never… seen Mukuro look that far away like he’s looking at something else entirely...

“Hey, Mukuro? Um.” 

The shopkeeper’s eyes are on them, he knows, but he’s more preoccupied with the pale-faced, formerly smug bastard rooted to the floor. Rumors be damned, this was more important.

Whatever it was that was up with him, it probably had nothing to do with the mobsters that were after them both before this— _that_ he seemed used to. This was different. But how?

Softer this time, Tsuna approaches him, calling out again even if he didn’t know exactly what to say, “uh, hey… you alright?”

His fingers graze Mukuro’s shoulder and they both recoil, Mukuro due to the touch, blinking at him, and Tsuna because Mukuro flinched, too.

“It’s a, um, tight squeeze, but both of us can go through the door at the same time, if you want?”

“No, no… it’s… fine. I’m fine,” he says like he’s trying to convince himself of that more than he was trying to convince Tsuna. Tsuna, himself, isn’t inclined to push him.

“Uh, yeah. You want to go first, then? I’ll be right behind you, I swear.”

“...Alright,” he concedes, passing him stiffly. Tsuna pretends not to notice how hard he’s trembling, the way his steps stutter, and his shoulders bob.

Tsuna watches numbly at Mukuro takes a deep breath, and flings himself into the portal all at once, swallowed up by the device. 

He follows suit.

There will be rumors, he knows, but that’s a problem for another night. For now, he just wants to go home where it’s _safe._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "safe" LOL not for long, Tsuna!
> 
> Thanks for reading.


End file.
